


Save It For Later

by elenorlaura



Category: Smallville
Genre: Community: chlollie, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-20
Updated: 2014-02-06
Packaged: 2018-01-01 09:36:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 109,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1043279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elenorlaura/pseuds/elenorlaura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something tall, sweet, and sexy with an umbrella stuck in it--a very Chlollie-centric Season 9. Written for Smallville Big Bang 2013 and dedicated to Chlollie fans, fanartists, It is mostly canon compliant, through Season 9 and 10. </p>
<p>Disclaimer: The characters, settings, and storylines created for Smallville and/or DC Comics are the intellectual property of others. No copyright infringement is intended in this derivative work of fiction created for no commercial purpose.</p>
<p>Art (and inspiration) by Bkwurm1 here: http://bkwurm1.livejournal.com/13961.html<br/>and beta by Jacquie</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Banner here: http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/bkwurm1/12629216/19310/19310_900.jpg

Oliver didn’t know how it happened. One moment, he was finishing out a crappy decade—twenty-nine. Only 365 days to 30. He’s wading through life with a drink in his hand, a pocket full of cash, and he’s up for something tall, cool, sexy, and smoking hot—English optional. He speaks five languages passably well, he’s blessed with the kind of good looks that hold up despite being drunk, sweaty, and unshaven, and he can get across ‘let’s get naked’ with a look. 

Flash forward through the drama, most of which was at least a little (a lot) self-inflicted, and he’s a clean and sober guy with two jobs, living in the middle of an extensive renovation, or sleeping at the office. His business partner is the first woman he loved and let down. His grand gesture to re-kindle their relationship cost about ten billion dollars and is a work-in-progress only in that they are locked into managing their combined companies. 

Since he didn’t sleep in the office the previous night, he was stuck in traffic for the seven block crawl home at the end of a day that had him feeling like he had been parachuted into someone else’s life. At Luthor Corp, end of month was something you could smell in the tension-filtered air blowing through the building. Two days ago he was celebrating a win in the Icicle take-down while Queen Industries finance team was starting a forty-eight hour lock-in with their Luthor Corp counterparts to close the month. 

They were on their way back to Star City now, looking more worked over than the big bad of the week. 

In the world of Queen Industries, closing the month happened every month, so it wasn’t a crisis even if the numbers were bad. At Luthor Corp it was war with divisions scrambling to protect themselves from each other because Luthor Corp valued that kind of competition. 

His phone buzzed. The caller ID registered Chloe Sullivan. He had ignored three calls from her earlier in the day.

He opened with, “Why am I in a traffic jam?”

She barely missed a beat. “Are you on Broadway?”

“No, I’m coming from the office, headed to my place.”

“There is an accident on Broadway. It’s a four car pile-up. There is a construction project on Fifth that is adding to the congestion for people who are trying to bail out of the traffic jam on Broadway,” she explained. 

“Huh,” he grunted. “Should have walked to work,” he sighed. “Okay . . . I missed a couple of your calls. What’s up?”

“Could you suit up tonight?”

Chloe’s patrol schedule was a work-in-progress. He didn’t need to guess what had gone wrong tonight. It was Clark’s night and he wasn’t answering, or he had plans and ‘forgot’ to tell her. It didn’t mean that Clark wasn’t patrolling, though the double coverage was probably overkill at mid-week.

How sad was his life lately that he was actually looking forward to it? “I’m in,” he agreed. “Do you want to eat before I do my thing, or wait until after?”

After the Icicle take down, he had gone out to dinner with Chloe and John Jones. After dinner, Oliver had walked her back to Watchtower only to realize that with the window smashed, Watchtower wasn’t secure, it was really too late for her to be driving to Smallville after the night she had. When he offered to put her up in a hotel until the window was replaced, she declined. 

He insisted. Hotel, his guest bedroom, or he was sleeping on the couch until her window was repaired. To his surprise, she took his guest bedroom. It led to an interestingly domestic morning with a half-asleep Chloe confronting him about his kitchen’s lack of coffee while he was getting ready to leave for his morning run and a training session with Mia. He promised to bring her coffee when he came back to shower and change for work. 

Sleepy, coffee deprived, cranky Chloe was cute, and kind of inevitable given the way his run cleared everything in his head but anticipating his disappointment if she got impatient and left before he returned. Which was stupid, but she looked so sad when she said, “Ollie? You don’t have coffee?”

It was as if he cancelled Christmas. 

He ended up calling Mia to tell her that he was going to be late while standing in line for coffee, and bought a pound of the house blend to avert the future coffee crisis that was also inevitable. 

“I’m good for now. Let’s make it after . . . and in a minute you are going to think I’m very good,” she practically purred.

Oliver found himself reacting to the suggestive tone, and shook his head at himself. His little unrequited crush with Chloe’s voice started years ago. He was pretty sure that she had no idea what she sounded like sometimes, and he didn’t think he was the only one that noticed.

“You should be coming up on the art’s center garage. On the other side of the entrance to the garage, you’ll find a narrow alley. Take a right there—“

“Got it,” he interrupted. It was a tight turn, but he made it. “Tell me that you lo-jacked my car and not me, Chloe.”

She blew out and exasperated breath. “So suspicious. I hacked your service support accounts ages ago,” she said breezily. 

Of course she did. “Where am I going?”

“Enter the Civic Center parking lane on the left. This will take you under Sixth Street and then you can take the Market Street exit to get around the traffic.”

“Nice,” he complimented her. “See you in a few?”

“I’m running some errands, but yeah, if I’m not there when you arrive, I won’t be far behind you.”

 

Chloe Sullivan slipped her phone back in her handbag, smiling politely as a group of weary Queen Industries employees heading back to Star City began boarding the corporate jet. She finished packing a briefcase of files that Oliver mentioned needing since he was sending a group of executives home on the jet reserved for his use. 

She got a few curious looks from the boarding passengers and heard the co-pilot explain that Ms. Sullivan worked for Mr. Queen and that she was upgrading the wi-fi, and had ordered an in-flight meal that would be delivered shortly, compliments of Mr. Queen. 

While the passenger’s settled in, she made her way to the front of the plane to de-plane. The ground crew on the general aviation side of the airport took no notice of her as she returned to the building serving a row of hangers as a terminal for private jets and cargo planes. A few minutes later, she was in her car and back on the road to the city, ignoring the tension that had settled in her shoulders.

The on-board wi-fi connection that was used on the QI corporate jet was one of the few vulnerable points she had been able to identify in QI’s data security plans. The plane carried Oliver too often someone had decided to make sure that nothing impeded his access while he was flying. 

Jimmy had left her so much. She hadn’t so much as thought about updating her beneficiaries before they were married. After he filed for divorce, and after she left Metropolis with Davis, Oliver had hired Jimmy and he had made her his beneficiary on his 401K. His life insurance was split between her and his younger brother. A salary continuation benefit paid off the Watchtower mortgage. The idea of financially benefiting in any way from his death made her feel ill when she was notified about the life insurance by Jimmy’s father. 

This was better. It felt right to make Jimmy a part of her fail safe plan. 

She had been waiting for weeks for Jimmy’s life insurance to pay out. If everything went according to plan, she wouldn’t need to use the back door she had created for herself to fund her project. If it didn’t, she would have access to money and a way to move it to an off-shore account and then replace it with the insurance money. 

She didn’t feel great about her decision to create a back-up for financing by exploiting a vulnerability in QI’s data security. Stopping at a grocery store on the way back to stock up on bottled water, she picked up fresh produce and overpriced bread at an upscale grocery.

She was on her second trip carrying groceries up on the elevator when Oliver breezed in. He immediately offered to take the bags from her. 

She handed him her keys instead. “There is a case of bottled water in my trunk,” she explained. 

When he came in, he was carrying the case of water in a one handed grip that made her want to call him out for showing off, as well as a jumbo 30 roll package of toilet paper. The toilet paper evened things out. “This is for up here, too isn’t it?”

“That’s mine and Lois’,” Chloe told him, straight faced.

He gave her a good natured, “You forget. I’ve visited Girl’s Town, and if you think Lois is giving this kind of bathroom or bedroom storage space up to toilet paper . . . Yeah, right! That’s never going to happen. Where do you want this?”

She laughed because he was right. Four rolls, under the sink, was the absolute limit for Lois. “Leave one package down here and the rest goes upstairs,” she said. “The water is for the kitchen—“

“Obviously,” he finished, setting the case by the refrigerator, and looking over the tops of the bags. “Did you get anything good—wow! That looks like real food,” he said, throwing her a skeptical look. “You know you probably shouldn’t try to microwave some of this stuff.” 

“I have a Panini maker,” she explained. 

“We need beer.”

“I got beer.”

He forgot about the toilet paper and started getting into the bags to see what she had purchased. “The pop tart cabinet had me worried about you,” he said as he started separating things that needed to be refrigerated from things that didn’t. 

“The pop tarts are for Bart.”

“Sure they are,” he said, flashing a quick smile.

Chloe shook her head. “Get out, and take the toilet paper upstairs with you,” she shoo’d him out of her kitchenette. 

 

A few hours later Oliver was checking in with Watchtower when he heard the thud of Hawkman’s boots behind him. He had no idea what the guy’s wings were made of, but they had to weigh a ton. Oliver didn’t bother to look over his shoulder to confirm. A muscle in his shoulder was already twitching, and that was all the confirmation he needed. It was Carter. It figured that Carter had his own personal twitching nerve assigned to him.

“Still there, Arrow?” Chloe’s voice hummed in his ear.

“Yeah,” he confirmed. “Me, and my shadow.”

“Hawkman?” she managed to invest his name with sympathy and amusement at his expense. 

“You got it in one,” he confirmed. Maybe if he just ignored him, Big Bird would go away.

“I’d really like to get a tracker and a comm on him,” Chloe said. “Do you think—“

“No, no, _no_ ,” Oliver overrode her. “Seriously, Tower. You are killing me here. Arrow, out.”

“Is Chloe your girlfriend or your boss?” Carter asked.

“Really?” Oliver scoffed. First, she’s his secretary, and now she’s his girlfriend? ‘Boss’ was tossed out with enough mockery that Oliver decided that Big Bird had issues with women in charge. Oliver was proud to say that he didn’t.

“Obviously, she’s the boss.”

Gravel crunched under Carter’s feet. “I wasn’t sure if you knew that or not,” he said. “Does Clark?”

“Boy Scout,” Oliver corrected automatically. “No, and he’s oblivious to the epic power struggle. For the record, I’m not asking. I’m telling you, when you are ready to join you get a nifty GPS tracker and one of these,” Oliver pointed at his Bluetooth, and then did a little finger rotation to indicate the city. “Real time police scanner, every camera in the city, the electrical grid, every kind of map of the city you can imagine plus detailed blue prints of buildings, and Tower’s brain at your disposal. A little please and thank you would not go unappreciated by those of us who do her bidding and make non-lethal use of lethal weapons.”

“Chloe is very helpful,” Carter said. “The voice in your ear, ready to provide intel and back-up, or just keep you company. Nice little set-up you’ve got, Green Bean.”

“Cryptic, huh? Whatever, man. I’m—“

“Arrow?” Chloe cut in. “I’ve got a two on one armed robbery in progress on 4th and Winkler,” Chloe said. “What’s your status?”

Oliver tapped his comm. “In route,” he said. “Damn it! I hate you,” he gritted out at Hawkman. “Give me a lift, man. I’m out of range. “I need that building,” he pointed to a 15 story high rise three blocks away. “Thirty seconds ago.”

Having been in the air with Hawkman before didn’t really help. The vertical lift was brutal, but Oliver just gritted his teeth, and tried to relax into a hard landing that sent him skidding in the wrong direction on a steep roof of broken slate shingles. Hawkman pivoted in mid-air and waited for him to get his footing while he was loading a bow. 

“Arrow?”

“Busy,” he said tersely, unable to keep from sliding. He just went with it, firing off a knock-out gas arrow since that would disrupt the attack and maybe take down the assailants. 

His slide came to a stop at the edge of the roof, with one foot planted against the outer lip of a box gutter of questionable age and stability. He quickly found a target for a grappling arrow and set a line to descend. Hawkman sped ahead of him to knock some heads together.

“Call Metro for the pick-up, Tower,” Oliver told Chloe a few minutes later when the baddies were out cold. He pulled a pair of zip-ties out of a compartment in his belt.

“You got ‘em! Great job!” she cheered, the muted sound of her keyboard clicking in the background. “MPD is on the way, and just in time! I need you moving to the women’s shelter on Canal. There is a guy prowling around outside and MPD has put the call on a low priority for response. Gut feeling . . . check it out?” her voice rose at the end, turning it into a plea.

“On it,” he said as he finished securing the assailants for pick up. The dazed driver of the car was bleeding pretty heavily from what looked to be a broken nose. 

“The police are on the way. Just wait here for help.” Oliver guided him over to the curb. 

“Am I tripping, or does that guy have wings?” he asked hoarsely.

“Costume party,” Oliver improvised. “Go figure, huh?” 

“Arrow,” Hawkman growled.

“Dude! Green Arrow. I gotta get a picture. My friends are never going to believe this!” he said. 

“Okay,” Oliver sang under his breath. “Really, time to go. Lives to save.”

The guy held his fist up for a fist bump. Why not? Oliver fist bumped him and set off at a jog, retrieving his line. “C’mon,” he called out to Hawkman.

“Need a lift?” Carter rasped right before he grabbed him by the hood. 

“I really hate you,” Oliver said. “Go left, and—ugh!” he groaned when he was clipped by a sign sticking out over the corner.

“Canal Street. Women’s shelter,” he wheezed. 

“Arrow?” 

His comm was still open. 

“Are you okay?” to be fair she really did sound worried. Her voice was also vibrating with suppressed laughter. 

“Peachy,” Oliver told her bitterly. “You might as well just place your delivery order, because you are going to be icing some ribs tonight, Tower.”

“Tell me when to place the order. Do I need to have medical on stand-by?”

Medical was code for Emil. “Nope. Switching to silent running. Arrow, out,” he said before Hawkman dumped him on top of a dumpster. Hah. So funny. He really hated that guy.

Oliver jumped down and jogged around the corner, rubbing his side. Unfortunately, the women’s shelter was a location he was extremely familiar with given that it was like stalker’s alley. On some nights there were two or three guys down here looking for the runaway wife or girlfriend who had tired of being knocked around, forcing the entire building to go on lock down. 

The last time he was here, there was a guy with a boombox on his shoulder singing a horribly off-key Roxanne. Sorting out public nuisance from actual criminal intent sometimes meant that he had a long, boring wait for something to happen. 

Carter whistled to get his attention. He was in between buildings taking off his helmet and breastplate. Without it, he looked like a relatively ordinary, albeit sweaty and grizzled, guy. Oliver hung back, curious about where he was going with this. Their stalker wasn't even going for subtle. He was out front with the passenger side door open and the engine running. 

Carter walked up and tapped on the driver’s side window. 

The driver rolled it down. “What do you want?”

“Go away,” Carter said. “You are scaring the people in the building.”

“Screw them and screw you. I’ll leave when Denise gets her ass in the car.”

“No, that doesn’t work for me,” Carter said patiently. “Go away, and don’t come back. I’m not one of the city’s costumed heros or a cop. I’m just a guy who likes to make people who scare women and children bleed,” he said, reaching in to grab a fistful of the driver’s shirt. He followed up by punching him hard in the face. 

Oliver winced at the sound of bone cracking. 

“Better. Now you are bleeding from the nose.”

“Arrow?” Chloe’s voice sounded whisper soft in his ear.

“Go,” he said quietly.

“I’ve got a 911 call coming in from the shelter. There is a guy in the street beating up—“

“Yes, he is,” Oliver nodded. 

“Hawkman?” she sighed.

“He’s going Conan,” Oliver confirmed, “without the mace. “He really does come from a simpler time, you know.”

“I just sent a SOS to Dan Turpin and asked for an assist,” Chloe reported. 

It took Oliver a second to place the name. Turpin was MPD and he’d been involved in a little ring of cops looking for some extra-legal justice. “Right, so we better clear out,” Oliver said. “You got anything else for us?”

“Since you mention it . . .” Chloe said. “Busy night.”

Oliver turned his comm off and whistled for Hawkman’s attention. “Hey man, what do you think you are doing?” he shouted, gesturing for Hawkman to roll it up.

Carter yanked the guy’s keys out of the ignition and tossed them. “Cops are coming, princess. Have a good time down in lock up.”

“Stylish,” Oliver critiqued when they were on a rooftop five blocks away. 

“Expedient,” Carter retorted. “After you go home and your girlfriend locks up for the night, who is watching out for her?”

And, Chloe was demoted to girlfriend again. Dinah was going to make Carter’s ear’s bleed if they ever teamed up.

“She’s got a tazer. I think she’s got it covered,” Oliver retorted. “Seriously, man. Say that in front of her, because you’re getting the eyebrow of doom if you do.”

Carter looked moderately amused. 

Oliver was busy lining up his shot. He had time and was tempted to get off a fancy trick shot, but he didn’t want to come off like the jackass Carter accused him of being, so he waited. Chloe had sent them a silent alarm at a lingerie shop next to a dentist’s office and under an apartment. There was a light on in the apartment, so there were possibly civilians moving around. 

 

“So, this guy is practically falling down the side of the building—no finesse, just panic with Hawkman hovering in mid-air in front of him—“Oliver winced as he pulled a black, sleeveless t-shirt over his head. 

His exaggerated ‘ow’ made Chloe roll her eyes as she briskly shook out a bag of frozen peas to loosen the contents enough to shape for a cold compress. 

She came out of the kitchen to find Oliver, naked to the waist and nearly rolled her eyes again. He was worse than a toddler about throwing his clothes off for any reason. She spun around to grab a couple of beers, passing one to Carter Hall.

“Ollie!” she tossed the other bottle to him.

He snagged it, effortlessly. 

She gestured to his discarded gear. “There isn’t enough air freshener in the universe for sweat and leather. Get this out of my work space, take a shower, and then you get a nice, cold bag of peas for your owie.”

He grimaced. “Fine. It was a funny story, though,” he grumbled, grabbing his stuff and heading up the stairs.

“There was a naked guy with a baseball bat,” Carter jumped to the funny part. “He wanted an autograph.”

Chloe cracked a smile. It faded pretty quickly. “Sorry,” she said. “Long day.”

“Yeah . . . thanks for the help tracking down Ted and his family,” Carter put in. “If there is ever anything we can do for you—“

She shook her head. “I’m all about calling in favors,” she assured him, rubbing the back of her neck and wincing at the rattle of pipes as Oliver turned the shower on upstairs. She turned to look at Carter. “You aren’t a plumber?”

He chuckled. “No,” he shrugged, “but, Pat—Courtney’s step-father?—is a general contractor. I think we can work out something on discreet plumbers.”

Chloe manifested a degree of pleasant surprise. “Okay,” she nodded. “That was almost too easy. I’m used to having to make a case.”

Carter winced at a particularly loud groan from the pipes, and she chuckled. “Okay! The pipes are making a case for themselves,” she made another pass through the kitchenette to top off her coffee cup and plug in a Panini maker. 

Carter found himself smiling at the artless way she had walked him into volunteering to help out. She was frowning over an uncut loaf of bread. “What do you have for knives?” he asked, joining her in the kitchenette.

“Mostly stuff in the ginsu family,” she said, showing a motley collection that included a paring knife, a long, thin bladed boning knife, a small clever, a meat ax, and a longer serrated knife. 

“What’s the plan here?” he asked.

She went to the refrigerator, pulling out a block of cheese, a bag with two tomatoes, and vacuum-packed prosciutto, the avocado, and alpha sprouts. Carter nodded. “Good choices,” he said, peering around her shoulder. “Get the onion and the green pepper, too. We can use that,” he took the serrated knife and started making precise angled cuts to slice the bread.

“How long have you been helping Oliver and Clark?” he asked, in part to make conversation, and in part because he was curious.

“I was around Courtney’s age when I headed down this path with Clark. Ollie came into the picture later, after I started working at The Daily Planet.”

By the time Oliver came down from showering, they had two sandwiches in the press and were making more, and chatting about Carter’s work as an archeologist. “I’m thought, by my peers in the field, to be too intuitive,” Carter was confiding. “It’s not a compliment.”

Chloe sipped her coffee, smiling up at him. “So . . . flash forward a couple of hundred years and you are working on a site and you find a leather bag with a Hello Kitty keychain—“

He smiled, nodding. “Something like that, though my peers tend to err on the side of ‘it’s just a keychain’. A lot of archeology is digging through the garbage. The significance of objects beyond utility is left to the anthropologists—until they get it wrong, and then we mock.”

“So, you teach?” she said, giving him a friendly sideways look. “I might have Googled you,” she admitted. 

Oliver found himself watching them. Objectively, Carter Hall had rebound boyfriend potential. He was all soulmated-up to his late wife, and just hanging out until he died so he could be reincarnated to find her again. On the other hand, the idea of Chloe settling for an old guy with a death wish who annoyed the crap out of him on a regular basis just rubbed him wrong. Really, really wrong. 

It was a good thing that he was around to keep that from happening. 

He justified this quickly—they worked together, and therefore he had a right to object to her hypothetical rebound boyfriend. And she could do better, though arguably that ruled him out.

He stole a ribbon of green pepper from Chloe, nudging her hip. “You knife work sucks,” he told her.

She surrendered the knife without stabbing him and he resumed where she left off, pausing to examine the slightly bent tip of the knife. “What did you pry open with this?”

“DVD player. It was a disk slippage emergency,” she patted his back. “Do you want me to wrap up your ribs?”

“Uh-huh,” he ate another piece of the green pepper. “I’m starving.”

“Carter has someone who can work on the plumbing,” Chloe told him, heels clicking on the floor as she moved to the other counter to collect the thawing bag of frozen peas.

She returned to nudge his elbow up. “That’s my sandwich you are making, so pay attention. I want thinly sliced green peppers, no skin,” she said as she lifted his t-shirt.

Frowning, she ran her fingers over his ribs. “I heard you hit something hard,” she said, puzzled by the lack of bruising.

Oliver tilted his head, and considered teasing her about feeling him up. “Other side,” he said.

She shook her head, moving around him to pull his t-shirt up again. She felt around. “How does that feel?”

“I’m not produce,” he complained. “Your hands are cold,” he added. The benefits of icing his ribs were becoming less obvious. He was clean, warm, and cuddling up to an ice cold bag of peas was not appealing. “Now that I think about it, it’s fine,” he added. “I took ibuprofen.” 

Chloe ignored his protests and wrapped his ribs once in an Ace bandage so he wouldn’t get a chill before she wrapped over the bag of peas. 

Carter took off while they were still eating, and Chloe brought out the stash of locally made sweet chilli potato chips and a beer. 

Oliver patted the empty spot next to him on the couch. “I will chase you around here and take your chips if you don’t share,” he warned. 

She joined him. “How are your ribs? Really?”

“I’ve had worse,” he said while she grasped the bag at the top, pulling it open so slowly that you’d think she was doing a potato chip strip tease. She offered him the bag first.

“Three things I like about Kansas . . . these potato chips . . . weird 60 degree days between Christmas and New Years . . . and traffic, because a traffic jam is pretty rare.”

“All good,” Chloe agreed. “This is not to be repeated around Clark, but I like pick-up trucks, tractors, and cows.”

“Cows?” Oliver repeated. “You like cows?”

“Cows are surprisingly good company. Who knew?”

“You got married in a barn, so I thought that was probably more you than Jimmy,” Oliver said, digging into the bag for more chips. “It worked. You looked like you were modeling for the best possible reason to get married, and Lois was rocking the burnt orange bridesmaid dress.”

“Aw!” he got one of those smiles she tended to bestow on Bart when he was flirting with her.

Chloe looked over at him with a smile and a hint of curiosity. “She looked great, didn’t she?”

“Yeah,” he thought about ignoring the curiosity that went with the look. “That’s when I knew that _Lois knew_ that Clark was on her radar.”

Chloe nodded. “Yeah, they remained oblivious a lot longer than I thought they could.”

“The anniversary of the wedding came and went before Thanksgiving,” Oliver noted. 

“I . . . it was another life,” she said after a moment, leaning forward to brush potato chip crumbs off her top. 

He didn’t push. Looking across Watchtower, he just mulled over how that led to this. Knowing as little as he did about her life, Jimmy really had picked the perfect setting for Chloe’s next act of reinvention. 

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you,” he said. It didn’t come out as smoothly as he would have wished. Given his state of mind at the time, he would have been worse than useless. He stayed away for precisely that reason. 

She bumped his shoulder with hers. “You’re here now,” she said, gesturing to her array of computers, “and you helped make all of this come together.”

He nodded. “I bought this couch,” he added. “It’s eggplant. I thought it was a color you’d like,” he did a fake modest shrug. 

“And you got my window fixed in record time,” she noted. 

She did a little back and forth head bob. “There are some things I want to do around here . . .” she gestured with her beer bottle, “to make it more comfortable.”

“Just a thought, but this is kind of the new clubhouse, so I’m happy to finance the Watchtower upgrade,” he offered, adjusting the bag of peas now that they were getting a little mushy. 

“Oh, I’m going to hit you up for the plumbing and the electrical, and Victor is already working on some new security features—“

“I got that. We can’t have people getting tossed through your windows on a regular basis.”

“Or, sneaking in through the cupola,” Chloe added. She had set the bag down between them so they could both reach it more easily. “They have a new flavor coming out next month,” she told him. “Spicy Thai.”

Oliver paused with a chip on the way to his mouth. “Pure evil,” he muttered.

She picked at the label on the bottle in her hand with her thumbnail. She was tempted to tell Oliver about her fail safe plan. Since he had returned from his little walk about on the wild side, he had quietly stepped up and if he wasn’t her first phone call, for every crisis, that was mostly habit. After Icicle was hauled off to MetGen, Clark disappeared. Ollie was the one who showed up later, not only helping her get the repairs done in record time, but making sure that she had a place to stay so she wouldn’t have to drive to Smallville. 

She looked over at him, and he smiled, adjusting to throw his arm across the couch behind her, rubbing her upper arm briefly before closing his eyes. 

He looked tired. Maybe he hadn’t thought of all of the contingent futures that could go wrong. He seemed to share Clark’s faith that knowing what the future held gave them an edge in defeating it. 

In all of her years of keeping and protecting secrets, she had learned that the best approach was to isolate the secret and maintain a strict discipline of containment. 

Clark had a hard time getting past Ollie’s appropriation of Lex’s Kryptonite ring and the arrow he had used to disable Clark to keep him from interfering in their half-baked plan to take out Davis. He and Clark were just getting past their differences and finding their way to a healthier partnership than they had in the past. 

Involving Oliver in her plans at this point was unacceptable.

He tugged on her hair lightly. “You’ve got a serious look on your face,” he said. “Is everything okay?” he peered at her. “By everything, I mean . . . you. Are you okay? I worry about you, sometimes.”

“Me?” her eyes widened.

“Crazy, huh?” he turned toward her, wincing a little at the reminder that his ribs had taken a hard hit. His hand fell to her neck, fingers squeezing lightly. He made a face at the muscle tension. “You let me off easy on letting you down,” he said. “I meant what I said last week. Don’t give up on us, and . . . let us help?” he tilted his head when her gaze dropped. 

She frowned, feeling something hard pressing against her heart. Okay, maybe that was just heartburn from scarfing her Panini and half a bag of chips down, but still, it felt like the pressure of all of the things that she had to keep battened down was squeezed inside her chest. At times like this, she wished that she could burp like Lois could—if it was heartburn. If it wasn't, she wished that she could just box it up and kick it to the curb like Clark did. 

She took a sip of her beer instead, closing her eyes while Oliver’s palm warmed her neck. Loosing Jimmy, and Clark, and Lois at the same time isolated her. She had a recurring dream that she was back at Black Creek, only everyone was gone and she couldn’t find a way out. Sometimes she dreamt that it was high school, or the basement of the Daily Planet, but no matter the venue, it was the same. She was alone and there was no escape. 

She forced herself to take a deep breath. It eased the pressure in her chest. The heel of Oliver’s hand rubbed her neck in a soothing circular motion. Before she could slip back into the permanent gray that edged her thoughts, he teased her out of it.

“I hear that you are a terrible guest,” he murmured.

She cocked her head to one side. “Who do you hear that from?”

“Mangement,” there was a hint of laughter lurking in his voice. “It might surprise you to know this, but I have people—“ he shrugged.

Chloe found herself smiling. Technically, she was one of Oliver’s people, but since he had put her up in his guest bedroom the night after Hawkman tossed him through the window, she guessed that he was talking about his housekeeping service. “Yeah . . . you have people.”

“And I don’t have guests a lot, So, they were on alert for a very demanding VIP guest, and you didn’t leave your wet towels on the floor.”

She smiled. “I made the bed, too.”

“I actually heard about that,” he teased. “And you left a nice note on the counter.”

Rolling her neck, she leaned back into the comfort of his hand cradling her neck, opening her eyes to smile for him. “It was the biggest bed I’ve ever seen in my life,” she told him. “The comforter must have been five inches thick and there were . . . six pillows? All white. It was like being in the middle of a marshmallow,” she put a little whine into the complaint. 

“And the coffee service was awesome,” he prompted.

“Mm-hm,” she hummed. 

“Try to be a little more demanding next time,” he ordered. His fingers rubbed the base of her skull and she tilted her head forward a little, feeling it down to her knees as the tension eased. 

She slumped sideways and her elbow crunched the potato chip bag left between them. He rescued it, getting to his feet to take the chips and the bag of peas back to the kitchen. Chloe stretched out into the warm space he occupied on the couch, stretching until she felt something give with a satisfying little ripple of feeling along her spine. 

He came back to stand over her, shaking his head. “Are you going to sleep here?” he asked.

She patted the couch. “I might,” she nodded to herself. “It’s a good couch. Are you taking off?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, it’s late. I guess I ought to . . .” he gestured to her, “since you are kicking me off the couch—“

She put her hand out. “Help a girl out,” she hinted.

He pulled her to her feet. She went to her desk to get her purse and then to the coat tree by the door to slip on a truly unfortunate plaid coat. Oliver found himself having another moment. It wasn’t a big, major, life changing thing. He just accepted that his evening was going to be extended a little longer because Chloe was going out for coffee and he was tagging along partly because it was late, but mostly because it was what he wanted to do. 

It took about a year to sift through the weight of guilt and displaced anger, but he has internalized what Clark tried to tell him over a year ago. Part of what they do is about helping people find a way back from a bad decision. Chloe ran him through a virtual maze to drive that point home. 

He was finding his way back from a bad decision.  
It surprised him that he didn’t think he was on the verge of making another a half an hour later when he noticed that there was a smudge of whipped cream on Chloe’s upper lip. She was drinking one of her outlandishly complicated concoctions and he was teasing her about how she sounded sometimes on the phone or when she was Watchtower.

“You mean bossy?” she guessed.

And, yeah, that just went right over her head. He was thinking about how to correct that impression when he realized that they were flirting. He was flirting. He wasn’t sure what she was doing. And what he was doing wasn’t exactly new. He careened into her orbit weeks ago, and now he was hanging out with her on coffee runs in the middle of the night and not even resenting it a little that she was completely oblivious. 

He stared at her long enough to make her self-conscious, and then he took the napkin she had around the bottom of her coffee cup and blotted the whipped cream off her lip, and ignored his epiphany. More or less. He draped his arm over her shoulder as they walked and let her tell him about how she was working on some new ideas about indexing data to improve retrieval speed, aware as her hands moved while she talked, that she was visualizing something that was abstract and, in some way, beautiful to her.

Chloe was finding her way back from some bad decisions too.

 

A few days later, he was playing golf with his other buddy, Emil, who was his personal physician. Dr Hamilton couldn’t possibly think that Oliver was hanging out with him because Oliver needed a therapist . He knew Oliver wouldn’t go to one as long as he had yoga, his second job, and golf cart therapy.

It was winter in Kansas, which meant that no one was playing golf even though the weather had been unseasonably warm. Still, Emil’s lucky golf pants were making him feel an unwanted second person embarrassment for the guy every time he rocked back and forth shaking his polyester plaid covered ass while lining up a shot.

His AA speech would probably go something like, “My name is Oliver Queen, and I’m not an alcoholic or in denial, but I am a jackass, and when I’m drunk my jackass filter is barely functional. It’s been three months since I’ve been drunk enough to not give a damn about anything, and it’s been less than three minutes since I missed not giving a damn about anything.”

He was really almost completely over that, but sometimes he regretted not letting his inner jackass out to play.

Their caddy, a business major at Met U, keeps calling him ‘sir’ and asking if he needs a drink. 

“Jesus, Jerry! Enough already. Get me a beer. No,” Oliver held up a finger, wagging it back and forth. “Go to the clubhouse, and get me a Pabst Blue Ribbon 1844. Don’t come back without it.”

“Pabst Blue Ribbon?” Jerry was looking at him like he was crazy.

“1844,” Oliver reminded him. “I don’t want to see you until you’ve got an ice cold one in your hand.”

“Yes, sir!” Jerry said, hurrying to the cart.

“Don’t take the cart,” Oliver stopped him. 

“Right! Your clubs . . . I’ll just . . . _jog_ to the clubhouse.”

“Good man,” Oliver saluted him. 

Emil watched him go and took his shot. It went into the trees. 

“Mulligan,” Oliver called out. “Why do we play golf? And why are those pants lucky?”

“It’s relaxing, and my wife gave them to me. She said that if I was going to be an asshole doctor who cut short office hours to play golf, I should look the part.”

Oliver started to laugh, and then he remembered that Emil’s wife was dead. The late Mrs. Hamilton was pretty funny. It slipped out anyway. “That’s . . . awesome. Man, I’m so sorry I didn’t get to know her.”

Emil shrugged. “It’s okay. She wouldn’t have liked you. She had a deep distrust of men who were prettier than she was.”

“Quirky,” Oliver commented as he placed his tee.

“Pabst Blue Ribbon 1844? Isn’t that only sold in China?” Emil asked. 

Oliver feigned surprise. “Is it? Really? Huh. It will be interesting to see what Jerry makes of that.”

Emil shook his head with a small, amused smile. “If this isn’t relaxing, then—“

Oliver twisted his neck to realign his spine. “I was thinking that this, along with a bunch of other crap, beats the hell out of AA, but what the hell do I know?” He paused to look over his shoulder at Emil. “That wasn’t rhetorical. Seriously, what do I know? I think I’m not a fucking mess, but then I look around, and what if I’m wrong?”

Comprehension was swiftly followed by compassion, and Oliver had to wonder how much of his messed up stuff Emil really knew about.

“A lot of people depend on you, Oliver.”

Okay . . . maybe not. 

It occurred to Oliver that maybe those people needed therapy worse than he did. He swung for the end of the fairway, and launched a 300 yard drive, straight down the middle. He was an awesome putter too. Just because he didn’t like golf as a business social exercise didn’t mean that he wasn’t good at it. 

“You are hating me right now, aren’t you?” Oliver guessed.

“A little bit, but since you are being an emo, moody bitch, it evens out,” Emil allowed.

“Huh,” Oliver returned his driver to his bag. He looked at the cart with a frown. “I guess one of us is going to have to drive the glorified lawn mower,” he observed. 

“You got rid of our caddy, who is _Josh_ , not Jerry,” Emil told him. 

“Right. He’s Josh when he stops answering to Jerry,” Oliver shrugged, walking around the driver’s side. Emil got in while he put the thing in gear and got it moving. “What is emo?” he wondered aloud. 

“Anyway, not important. You miss you wife, don’t you?”

Emil was prone to thoughtful pauses. They bounced around in companionable silence at 18 miles per hour. It was mostly companionable. Oliver was wondering if he had boundary issues as well as a strange longing for the positive side of uncomplicated alcoholism that was incompatible with his goals. Of course, it had occurred to him that the real problem was that he was incompatible with his goals, but that was more depressing and embarrassing than Emil’s golf pants, so he was ignoring that in favor of bonding over their mutual disdain for golf as a business leisure activity. 

“She was sick for the last three months of her life. Ovarian cancer. The percentages are pretty good with early detection, but she kept defying the odds at every turn,” he shook his head. “Illness like that strips away everything, and she was angry. Bitter,” he looked over at Oliver, deciding that he didn’t need to explain why a young woman with everything to live for would be bitter about dying. “I started missing her before she died, and now I remember her and I feel like she’s come back to me.”

Oliver’s discomfort with the direction that the conversation took was carefully stowed away. People assumed that he knew something about grief because of his parents’ tragic deaths, but he was a child when that happened. At some point in his teens he realized that he could no longer separate what he knew about his parents first hand and what people told him because he could not have retained so much detail outside of his personal experience of his parents. They had become characters in a book to him, and he missed them as fiercely as he resented them for being dead. 

“That’s . . . hard,” Oliver said. “I’m sorry.”

Emil gave him a curious look. “This is emo, in case you were still wondering.”

Oliver grunted. “I’m trying to be sensitive,” he protested. 

“Don’t. It makes you look queasy.”

“I bet you practice looking like you are momentarily overwhelmed with compassion,” Oliver shot back.

“A couple of times a day,” Emil nodded. “I like to start with the head tilt,” he demonstrated.

“No hugging?” 

“It feels wrong,” he shook his head. 

Oliver stopped the cart near Emil’s ball and they made a token effort to find it before Emil took a drop and made a drive that caught the lip of the putting green, took an odd bounce, and rolled to within twelve feet of the hole. 

Emil just shook his head. “If I tried for that? Not in a million years.”

Oliver finished with a twenty-three foot putt that came within an inch of the hole. After he tapped that in, Emil sank his twelve-foot putt. 

Not a single word containing a thought about their mutual acquaintance, Chloe Sullivan ever crossed his lips. 

 

“I’m not his girlfriend,” Mia was telling Jerry, or Josh, when Oliver made it to the parking circle. She was leaning against his Jaguar, looking like a jail bait version of his future girlfriend with her flowing hair and a leather jacket over a t-shirt that looked poured on, and jeans that didn’t quite meet the hem of her t-shirt. It was kind of late in life to find himself in the position of being someone’s disapproving older brother, and it was weird how much he relished assuming the role.

“I’m way too close to being half his age for one thing,” she said with the withering scorn Mia could produce while sounding bored beyond the telling of it.

“Yeah? Well, he’s kind of a jerk,” Josh told her, eying the strip of bare flesh about the waist of her jeans while trying to look like he wasn’t sweaty, tired, and frustrated. “He told me to go find him a beer that is only sold in China and costs, like $500 a bottle. What a dick!”

Oliver smirked. Well, yeah, Jerry or Josh or whatever you are letting people call you, that was exactly what I was going for, Oliver thought.

Mia tilted her head, looking amused. “What were you going to do if you found it?” she asked. 

Josh sighed. “I don’t know,” he admitted with a goofy smile. “Ask if I could be his personal assistant slash mini-me clone? I was prepared to dye my hair blonde and hit the tanning booth. Maybe pick up some tips on how to drink beer without developing a beer gut,” he looked down at his abdomen. “Which is much needed advice,” he added.

Mia laughed at that. “Less beer, more treadmill. Oliver trains like an athlete,” Mia said, sounding proud of him.

Aw! He had his own little teen Barbie bad-ass in his corner.

“You are riding shotgun, Speedy,” he told Mia as he approached them. 

He held his hand out for the keys, eyeballing Josh. “Decode it for me, Jerry. When I tell you I want a Pabst Blue Ribbon 1844, what does that mean?”

“It’s Josh,” he muttered. “I guess . . . go away?” he offered.

Oliver nodded. “I’ll ask for you if I need a caddy again.” 

“Oooh! Lucky you!” Mia teased. 

Emil, dressed in his normal suit and tie, passed them, palming Josh’s tip. “Next week?” he asked Oliver, smiling at Mia when she offered him a very small wave.

“Yeah,” Oliver said, moving to the driver’s side door. Mia gave him an annoyed look, but went around to the passenger side. 

Training with Mia was fun and much easier than he expected it to be. She learned fast and she was far more disciplined than he expected. He had tried training with Bart, but Bart got bored too easily. He drove back to work, and diligently dug through another pile of stuff he was supposed to know about so he could make informed decisions about the pile of stuff that was waiting for his approval. 

It was the part of his life that he actually knew best. Hung over and swimming in self-pity after Winslow Schott tried to off him again, Oliver knew he had more than implied that he was burdened by his role as the beneficiary of his family’s wealth. The reality was that QI was a publicly traded company, so he didn’t have to run it no matter how large his stake was. No one forced this on him. He fought for it when many of his detractors on QI’s board thought that he was too young and too inexperienced. 

The playboy shtick that he hid behind to keep his real alter-ego under wraps had become a cover that he had was too tangled up in, to the point that he lost sight of the fact that it was mostly fiction. He wasn’t the CEO of Queen Industries as a happy accident of birth any more than he was Green Arrow because archery kept him alive for two years on a deserted island. 

 

So, he had a moment. And another moment, and a few other moments where the universe (in the form of his previously underutilized shiny new conscientious) cock-blocked him. On a purely selfish personal level, he was disappointed. It occurred to him that the best possible outcome involved him scrubbing his mind out with soap. This happened when he saw Chloe Sullivan wearing something that was cute, but not provocative. 

This meant it happened at least once a day. Or looking wholesomely pretty rather than sexy. That happened a lot more. But then she’d toss off some snappy comeback, or zing him with a pointed retort, or give him that sarcastic snark that he was practically addicted to—and Jesus, he was perving over a pocket sized, caffeine addicted, workaholic with a serious lack of off switch and no respect for personal boundaries. 

His new attraction to Chloe Sullivan blindsided him. Finding his way back from his bad decisions, he had to wonder if he wasn’t just finding another way to shoot himself in the foot.

At first, he thought it was a delayed reaction to the new and improved Chloe with a side of displaced gratitude for saving his ass. New Chloe was efficient, with an edgy energy, and a stare that held a wealth of things that they were never going to talk about, all neatly jammed into the Chloe shaped person he had managed to take for granted in the past, and topped off with an enigmatic smile. 

She was also thoughtful enough to buy good beer and stock snacks for him.

Shedding her identity as Clark’s sidekick, Chloe had moved with disconcerting swiftness into her role as Watchtower. There were some miscues, sure. She had gone overboard on keeping a watchful eye on the team, but after what she did for him, Oliver was inclined to let her run with it. The first time he had walked into Watchtower, he had been looking at what his money bought. After his encounter with Roulette, he walked into Watchtower and _saw_ what Chloe had accomplished. 

Which brought him to this: still hanging out at Watchtower when he wasn’t bringing his company back from the brink, and after he realized that he was hovering. He was sure that she thought he was there as an act of penance and to keep him too busy to backslide. 

True, to a point. If you didn’t count the obscene amount of time he spent thinking about how she smelled when she was torturing him with iodine, rubbing alcohol, and hydrogen peroxide. He could tell what kind of day she was having based on her lipstick and the state of her hair. He was starting to hate days when she was all tarted up in her slim pencil skirts and professional blouses because he couldn’t stop staring at her ass and he refused to admit out-loud that he wanted to know who the hell she was dressed up for—unless it was him. 

He called her to suggest that they make a regular thing of dinner on Wednesday night with whomever they could round up, and she said that she’d try to make it. Rolling up on Wednesday afternoon, she was wearing a navy blue skirt and a silk blouse with a row of tiny buttons up the back. The idea that it was at least a little bit for him was making him a little too happy.

He had a bullet point list of reasons why he a) shouldn’t be attracted to her, and b) absolutely should not act on it. 

The reasons were beyond convincing. They carried his deep ambivalence and most unflattering doubts about his motivation. A few months ago, he had been trying to rekindle things with her cousin. So . . . was his sudden and unsettling attraction to his bereaved friend and employee who was also his ex-girlfriend’s closest attachment amongst her mostly detached relatives, a) mere coincidence, b) running straight at someone Lois would never be able to stand seeing him with, c) running straight at someone Clark would disapprove of him even thinking about, d) too damned convenient, and e) all of the above?

Chloe buried her ex-husband less than six months ago. Did she have a habit of expressing a deeper attachment to people than her actions would indicate was genuine? He thought that she had a tendency to get into one-sided relationships where she carried the burden of maintaining the relationship for people she was overly attached to who did not reciprocate her feelings, or were simply not emotionally available. 

His reasons against pursuing anything with Chloe had the ring of truth. His reasons came in part out of his responsibility to Lois to do no harm to her cousin, his deep affection for Chloe and sheer self-preservation. Despite his playboy reputation, not even at his absolute lowest point did he ever get involved with a woman he worked with. Except, Tess, and since he bought a company for her, and they had history, that was different

He outlined his bullet points on cocktail napkins. He stacked up his reasons through hours of meditation and yoga until he built a foundation that he was at peace with. And then he’d walk through the doors to her tower and watch it crumble. Today, it was a double take at his empty hands that ended with her hands on her hips, and a moue of pale pink lips with barely a hint of gloss left. 

“What’s a girl got to do to get a little coffee delivery action?” she joked.

He didn’t miss a beat before saying, “Call Bart?” but damned if he didn’t want to turn around and get her something with whipped cream just for the smile that he didn’t get instantly.

She cut her eyes at him in exasperation before she gave him a genuine smile. “Crime report digest is available and we have a working schedule for the next ten days.”

“Ten days? That’s pretty optimistic,” he opined, going to the extra desk that he used when he was at Watchtower. It put him at a right angle to her at her main console, so he could ogle to his heart’s content without getting caught. 

Her over-achieving was endearing. 

He had it bad. So bad, in fact, that he ought to have outed himself to Emil just to hear someone else tell him what was obvious—one of Dr. Hamilton’s special talents—and did he? 

Nope. 

He tried to talk himself out of it by focusing on her sheer girlishness to the point where he thought she suffered from arrested development. Beyond their super-hero club, did Chloe have any close friends that didn’t attend Smallville High School? She went to college without meeting a single person that made an impression on her? She worked at the Daily Planet more or less since high school, and no one but Jimmy Olsen got into her clique?

What was the story with her clothes? She was twenty-two and gorgeous. She dressed like someone’s mother picked out her clothes. Half of her tops looks like maternity wear, yesterday’s number managed to combine maternity top with a low neckline and showed a demure glimpse of cleavage that had him wanting to run out and injure himself so he’d have an excuse to look down her blouse. And why did he have to notice that there was something about the lushness of her mouth that combined with the smart, funny, incisive, commentary to make him think that he needed to totally overhaul his tendency to dismiss all things pink as blandly safe? 

“Oliver?” she had a large manila envelope, and she looked uncomfortable. He hoped that his face wasn’t doing something weird as he looked at her trying to project friendly receptivity. 

“I’m having trouble with some of this,” she said, holding out the envelope. “Could you—do you know who I should talk to?”

He took the envelope from her and slid the contents out, scanning the portfolio titles. It was all QI death benefit stuff. Jimmy must have named her a beneficiary. Since he hadn’t cleared his probationary period, Oliver had to sign off on extending the benefits that were funded through the company’s self-insurance pool, and he had, but he hadn’t inquired further. He quickly set aside the benefits connected directly to employment, which were redundant in her case. “This is the extended health care package for dependents, which technically does not apply to you because you already have similar coverage through employment,” he explained.

There was a salary continuation package and a life insurance rider. He scanned the elections, and thumbed through the file looking for the transfer on death forms. Jimmy left his salary continuation to Chloe and half of his life insurance to her. The rest went to his younger brother. His life insurance was set up to be conveyed as QI stock and tied into a twenty-year payout plan on dividend. She could bypass that for a cash pay-out, but Jimmy’s younger brother was a minor, and his elections were locked in.

He tilted his head to one side. “This hasn’t paid out?” he asked.

“Jimmy’s death certificate didn’t come until three weeks ago. Between Vortigen and discovering the JSA, I’ve been busy,” she said.

He frowned. “His salary continuation benefit should have been paid within two weeks of the funeral.” It was company policy not to wait for a death certificate to get assistance to their employee’s designated beneficiary. 

She shuffled through some papers. “It did,” she nodded. “I used it to satisfy the mortgage and transferred the deed to a shell corporation to dead end the paper trail.”

He started to offer to buy it from her. Jimmy bought this place for her and died here. The fact that she could stand being here and had built Watchtower here suggested that it meant a great deal to her. He decided that it was probably too soon to suggest that she transfer it to him to hold with the other assets they were accumulating to support their group.

He showed her how to track the value of the stock using an application on his phone. She had to lean over him to see what he was doing, and he wasn’t that surprised to find himself noticing how tiny she was. If he wrapped his arm around her waist, she’d fall into his lap and . . . yeah, he wasn’t going to be able to erase that appealing thought . . . ever.

That was more or less the moment when he gave up. He was twenty-nine years old going on thirty in 264 days, and this was supposed to happen. He was aware that he wasn’t nearly as willing as he ought to be. He had doubts and fears about what it meant that he was only seeing her. There were other women out there. Lots of them. Less complicated, more fun, and willing to settle for what he had to offer. 

The idea of Chloe settling didn’t sit well with him. On the other hand, maybe he was supposed to be the catalyst that jump-started her back to being a gorgeous twenty-three year old girl with a dazzling smile. They’d flirt, indulge themselves, and being sensible and kind-hearted and too smart not to see through him, Chloe would let him untangle himself without resenting him too much, and life would go on. 

“Someone in our HR department will be calling you in the morning to help you expedite the paperwork,” he said, texting his assistant to ask her to take care of it in the morning.

“I told Jonn that we’d meet him at the same place for dinner around eight?” she looked over at him curiously. “Victor got in on a 5:30 flight, so he’ll meet us there,” her eyes were alight with humor. “Just warning you. Jonn has this idea about starting a book club—“

“Yeah? A book club?” he shook his head. 

“I invited Carter, too,” she announced as she gathered up the paperwork. 

“Uh . . . why?”

Chloe laughed, looking over her shoulder at him.

He blinked and looked up hastily, clearing his throat. “I mean—you look really good today, with the,” he gestured vaguely, “and the heels and . . . no. _No-no-no_ ,” he shook his head adamantly. “You can’t be serious!” he protested as her eyes widened.

“This is ridiculous. That’s why I’m saying, no. For one thing, he’s way too old and why can’t he shave? Huh? And he talks about you like your salient characteristics are that you are helpful and cute.”

Chloe’s eyebrows shot up. “I am helpful and I’m very cute.” She continued on to her desk. “He’s getting a plumber lined up for me.”

“So?” Oliver gestured around, and then stopped when he realized that he was about to suggest that there was quid pro quo to be factored in, because that was just wrong, or she would remember that Emil was the one who helped her build Watchtower since he was busy rolling around in the gutter. 

She was giving him a vague incredulous look. “Think about what you are about to say very carefully,” she cautioned. “This is starting to sound like the kind of conversation I used to have with Clark about you.”

He nodded. “Right . . .” He was pretty sure that she meant because Clark was concerned about her working with him.

“We’re spread a little thin around here,” she pointed out. 

Oliver started to relax back into his chair. “Point taken,” he conceded. Hm. How to back pedal from that over-reaction, he wondered. “Eight?” he confirmed. 

“Heading back to work?” she asked.

He nodded, rising. “Yeah. I’ll meet you at the restaurant,” when he reached the doors, he paused, and then turned back. Chloe had come out from behind her desk and was reading off her screens with a thoughtful expression. 

When she saw him coming back, she gave him a curious look that turned wary, and she moved to return to her desk.

He wanted her. She was beautiful and smart and funny. She expected a lot from him, but she got that he was human. He made mistakes. Terrible mistakes. She didn’t let him get away with running away from that. How many people had reached out to him with the same message? Chloe was the only one who knew how to reach him, and thought it was worth it to risk everything to smack him around until he started working things out.

She was almost past him, when the demure line of buttons down her back and the sweet curve of her ass came into view, and he moved, sliding his arm around her waist and spinning her back into his chest. 

“I’m not Clark,” he said as he cradled the back of her head. Her eyes widened and her hands clutched at his arms. 

“And I don’t feel even a little like an over-protective friend,” he explained just before he kissed her.  
He kept it soft and slow, not forcing it. When the tip of his tongue flicked her lower lip, she opened up to him with a tiny, helpless sound of her flimsy defenses being shredded. Her fingers pulled at his shirt sleeve before slipping around to his back while her other hand rose to his neck. His arm tightened around her, feeling her pressed against him from his chest to mid-thigh and wanting more. 

When the kiss ended and her dazed eyes opened to meet his, he wanted to kiss her again. He didn’t. She looked too startled. 

“You kissed me?”

He nodded. “I did. It was nice. If you want to do it again, it’s your move, Chloe.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Link to banner: http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/bkwurm1/12629216/19460/19460_900.jpg

Normal people didn’t just go around kissing their colleagues. Or, if they did, they stuck around until their colleagues processed the sudden change in the dynamic. They didn’t just breeze out without a care in the world. 

They didn’t sit across from you at dinner a couple of hours later—while you were freaking out a little at how random it was—and have the utter gall to look like they were having an awesome time while you were talking plumbing with a middle aged contractor and former sidekick with the worst code name ever.

Chloe decided it was because it didn’t mean anything. If she was wrong, it wasn’t going to mean anything because Oliver said that it was her move, and her move was to pretend that it did not happen. 

 

In the meantime, it wasn’t like she was sitting on her hands. She started every day with new Kandorians in need of IDs, references, enough of a narrative history to blend in. Then there were little problems that Clark dropped on her to solve. Apartments, bank accounts, credit, medical—the support systems she built for her clients at Isis were for Isis, and she did not want the Foundation’s clients and the Kandorians to run into each other, so she had to work around that as well. 

Pat Whitmore, Courtney’s stepfather, came by to check out her plumbing and to start working on an estimate.

Victor was taking her basic design for Watchtower and adding capacity, redundancy, and security. The entire floor had to be re-wired. At the end of most days she was too tired to sleep. Her brain just kept churning through the next thing on her ever-expanding to-do list. 

She missed two appointments with the HR specialist assigned to work with her on Jimmy’s death benefits. This was stupid and crazy since she had an immediate and pressing need for that money since she was trying to buy or steal as much refined meteor rock as she could find. Between procuring forged documents and buying meteor rock, she was running all over the tri-county area with a lot of cash. She used Bart to courier for her forged documents whenever it was practical. Since these were cash transactions, she had to get Oliver to authorize the transactions, send Bart in to pick up the cash and make the exchange, and then get Clark to pick up the documents and get them to the Kandorians after she added her finishing touches on the ID’s, registering the tracking microchips she had placed in each ID. 

It didn’t really explain why she was still thinking about it a week later when she met Jonn and Victor for dinner on Wednesday night. They were debating ordering desert when Oliver arrived. 

When her heart tripped at the sound of his voice behind her head, she put it down to guilt. With the payout on Jimmy’s insurance policy delayed, she took advantage of her access to the Isis Foundation’s investment account, tapping the reserve line for nearly a hundred thousand dollars. Then worked on coding an exploit that would take advantage of the backdoor she created on QI’s server. Research and coding consumed the better part of a full day to find a weak point to attack and then write the code that would drag a false trail through servers all over the world. 

She had a meeting set up to expedite the paperwork for Jimmy’s life insurance, and she consoled herself with the idea that she would replace the funds from Isis within the week. Probably.

With a long drive home ahead of her, she left as early as she could manage. The next morning, she was working at her console when the first part of her new security upgrade pinged to let her know that Oliver was on his way up.

“Lu-cy? I’m home,” Oliver called out, doing a cheesy, but credible imitation of Ricky Ricardo as he breezed into Watchtower like a six-four breath of fresh, hot life.

Chloe looked away from her monitors, taking it all in. There was a lot to take in. The legs on that guy were ridiculous. In jeans, he looked spectacularly wholesome, healthy, and pleased with life. The burst of irritation that came with the interruption took a hard hit when he placed a cup of coffee in front of her.

“You’re in a good mood,” she noted as her own mood improved. He looked sunburnt, but he was just back from Florida, reconnecting with AC, so that wasn’t too surprising. 

“I am,” he agreed. “What did I miss around here?”

Her mood elevator dropped a floor. “The usual,” she said, bringing her coffee delivery to her nose, breathing in the scent. She took a sip. “Raspberry mocha?”

He was watching her with a smile. “It was the drink of the day.”

“Good choice,” she took another sip. 

“Clark’s panties are in a bunch?” he surmised, taking off his jacket and putting it over the back of one of her chairs. “Update me on our Kandorian friends,” he invited. “They are out in the world, making friends, getting jobs, finding crappy apartments in bad neighborhoods, having the usual alien immigrant meets world problems,” he snapped his fingers. “That one!” he said, grinning when he made her laugh with him.

She gave him a helpless shrug. “You do know that I don’t have any direct contact with them?” 

He huffed out a sigh. “Yeah, and Clark’s on Santa’s list for a sense of humor,” he confided, resting his hands on the edge of her workstation. It was cluttered with a lot of stuff including her ubiquitous coffee cup, an evenly spaced line of hot pink post it notes with her handwriting forming a to-do list in a column next to her mouse, her phone, and a decorating catalog with pages marked with post it notes.

Interesting clutter, he decided. 

He spent two days in Florida, going out with AC on a boat to dive in the morning. They spent the rest of their time at a bar on the beach, which for Oliver, should have been like sending a glutton on a diet to a buffet with all of his attractively packaged favorite vices on hand. 

His new-found appreciation of sobriety and Chloe Sullivan prevailed. Either that, or he was even less in a hurry to get back out there than he thought he was.

“What’s this?” he asked, reaching for the catalog, waiting for her nod before he picked it up and started thumbing through it. “If you are thinking about decorating this place,” he gave her a look, “pink filing cabinets to brighten up the place are a big no,” he told her.

She rolled her eyes. “They were ugly grey filing cabinets, they came with the space, and Lana and I spent hours taping them off and painting them.”

“That explains a lot,” he said. “She was post-Lex and you were enabling,” he nodded to himself as he flipped pages. “Hm,” he grunted. “What’s this for?” 

“There is a room upstairs with a box spring and mattress between a pair of milk crate end tables,” Chloe pointed out. “I sleep here sometimes. I was thinking about making it more comfortable.”

His eyebrows rose. “More comfortable, huh?” he started checking her tabbed pages. “You know I have a perfectly good guest room less than ten minutes away from here. “I’m neat—not freakishly so, but reasonably tidy. I have a cleaning service,” he dangled the offer. 

She tilted her head to one side.

“Hey,” he said softly. “I’m being serious,” he pointed at his face. “See?” He looked like he was experiencing the pangs of rejection again. It was a look she had seen on his face in his most recent post-Lois drama.

“Vordigen and Frosty’s kid broke in here, Chloe. Not so long ago you were sleeping with a gun under your pillow. Come stay with me for a while. If you hate it, you can move back in here after we’ve done some modifications to improve security,” he said with a hint of anxiety. “Don’t you get lonely? I get lonely.”

She figured that there was a punch line coming, but he simply held her gaze until she looked away, feeling oddly exposed for someone who hadn’t said anything personal. 

“In the meantime . . .” he let her know that he was backing off, “it’s an open invitation if you need a place to crash and you don’t want to drive to Smallville. At least until we get this place locked down like Fort Knox. What kind of progress are you and Victor making on that?”

She nodded, back on track with business, and walked over to the tabletop touchscreen unit to pull up blueprints of Watchtower. Her hands flew over the screen, calling up specifications and cost estimates. She video conferenced Victor in on the discussion. 

Courtney’s stepfather had contacted her with an estimate, so that was another problem that would soon be resolved.

Oliver signed off on their plans, and went to work. 

 

A few days later, she was at Luthor Plaza to meet with the HR specialist working on Jimmy’s death benefits. The meeting concluded at noon. Chloe composed a text to Oliver to tell him that she was in the building. She sent it and quickly followed with: Lunch?

When he didn’t respond by the time the elevator arrived, she slipped her phone into her pocket feeling a little disappointed. She was returning her visitor’s badge at the security desk when the greeter answered the phone. Her eyes flicked over to Chloe and she raised one finger. 

“Yes, sir. She is here, now,” she said, and then shifted the receiver away from her mouth to tell Chloe, “Ms. Sullivan? Your party will meet you here to leave for lunch,” she said.

Chloe walked over to lean against the back of an oversized couch while she checked her messages and email. Victor was working on streamlining Watchtower’s indexing and data compression, and the code wasn’t entirely de-bugged, so it generated automated error messages to her mixed in with her usual alerts. 

She was listening to a message from Lois when Oliver rounded the corner from the express elevator. It gave her an excuse to be occupied enough to be watching him without giving away that she was watching him. He carried off a business suit and tie and managed to look effortlessly polished. She cut off the recording of Lois grumbling about a ridiculous assignment, tucking her phone back into her pocket. 

She was wearing a pair of black trousers, heels, and a print blouse with a soft, shawl collared three-quarter sleeve sweater topped with a thin black belt, and found she enjoyed his appreciative appraisal as she pushed off the back of the couch. 

“I hope I’m not interrupting,” she said before he could say hello. “I was in your neighborhood, so I thought I’d take you out to lunch.”

“I’m glad you did,” he said. “Where are we going?”

“There is a new place around the corner that I wanted try.”

He fell into step beside her. “Were you here to meet with HR?”

“Yes. Thanks for setting that in motion.”

The new place she wanted to try was crowded so they ended up finding a food truck selling wraps and eating on a park bench. Chloe’s hands were cold and the horseradish in her wrap had her nose running freely before her wrap started dripping through the paper. Oliver disposed of it for her and surrendered the napkins he had grabbed for the cleanup.

“Wow! What a great lunch, Chloe,” she mocked herself.

Oliver had ordered a spinach and bacon wrap. “It was good,” he said, stretching his legs. He looked pleased in general. He ran his hand over her arm, squeezing it lightly. “You need to get out of the wind?” he asked.

She blew her nose. He chuckled softly, rubbing the soft angora of her sweater between his fingers. “Your cheeks and your nose are red,” he told her.

Great. Despite her bewilderment at why he had kissed her, this wasn’t the greatest time to discover that she had been enjoying the ego boost. 

Sure, maybe it sprang from some crazy idea that she was interested in Carter, and it wasn’t the first time Clark or Oliver had expressed some kind of possessive prior claim on her time and attention, but he kissed her and it seemed like more than just a spur of the moment thing. That was flattering. 

His hand slid under her shawl collar, rubbing her shoulder 

“May I ask you something?”

He tilted his head, biting his lower lip while he waited for the question with a knowing look on his face.

She kind of wanted to smack him for that, and considered dropping the question.

“Are you going to ask me why I kissed you?” he asked.

“Sort of,” she hedged. “Yeah, I—why? And, then no, because I get it. You’ve been through something that was very isolating, and who else would understand that? So . . . me, Dinah . . . I get that, but why?”

He looked amused. “It’s not that complicated. The bottom line is I kissed you because I really wanted to. Still do,” he added, “In case you were wondering.”

She had no idea what her face was doing, but it made him rub her shoulders. “You are my first and last call, no matter what kind of day I’m having. Making you uncomfortable is literally painful to me.”

For a heart stopping moment, when their eyes met, she thought he was going to kiss her again. 

He broke off first, checking his phone. “I’ve got a meeting in fifteen minutes,” he said, looking tempted to ignore the message.

Torn between disappointment and relief, Chloe rose, nodding. “I need to get back to work, too.” There was a garbage can a few feet away. She threw away a wad of napkins and tissues while Oliver flagged down a cab. 

He shrugged off her disapproval. “Normally, knowing that this is the only exercise that you get, I’d applaud your determination to walk eight city blocks in heels,” he pointed out as he opened the door for her. 

He gave the driver her address and a twenty to cover the fare. 

“Hey?” Oliver tucked a wayward curl behind her ear, smiling when it immediately sprang free. “I’ve seen you deflect like you are made of Teflon, so I’m getting mixed signals here. Just saying. No is a word that I understand and respect. Until I actually hear it, I’m operating under proceed with caution.”

Before she could say anything, the door was shutting and the cab was peeling away from the curb. Chloe stared blindly ahead until a break in the row of buildings abutting the street shot a shaft of sunlight glaring into her face. She went back to her purse for sunglasses and another tissue. 

The cabbie was an older guy. He looked amused, glancing back at her. “You’re Teflon?”

She huffed at that. “Crazy, huh?”

“So . . . you aren’t Teflon?”

“I find it difficult not to develop a crush on anyone with the good taste to like me,” she said. It was supposed to sound sarcastic, but it was a little too on the nose.

 

The next day, she bailed out of Watchtower before Oliver showed up for his scheduled patrol. She was having a bad day. Her morning was full of error alerts from the database. Victor had to put debugging code on hold to meet with their suppliers. The HR specialist she was working with told her that the insurance company hadn’t answered her calls.

A little after two in the afternoon, at a tech conference in Colorado Springs, a software engineer identified a weakness in a widely used server software package, announcing that the company was simultaneously pushing out a patch. Since her exploit depended on that weakness, Chloe had to deploy her exploit or lose her window of opportunity.

She picked up her cell phone and dialed Oliver. His voice mail picked up, and she ended the call without leaving a message. She’d have the money to replace what she was taking in a week or two. 

With two clicks of her mouse, she launched her exploit. 

Standing in the Civic Center, looking for Lois, her cell phone vibrated in her hand.

It was a text from Oliver asking for her location.

She dialed his number, holding the phone to her ear.

“What’s up?” she asked when he picked up the call.

“I’m getting ready to go do my thing. Where are you?”

“Meeting Lois for coffee,” she said. “She’s covering a comic book convention at the Civic Center. It’s Lois, so she’s probably in costume.”

Oliver chuckled in her ear, “Fun. I’ve got this. If you get pinged on anything, send it to my cell.”

She blinked a couple of times. “Are you sure?”

“I used to do this routinely without you in my ear. I think I can handle it,” he teased back. “I’m out here if you need anything.”

“Good to know,” she said, feeling some of her tension ease. “Ollie?” There was a blast of electronic noise from a toy ray gun near her ear, and she winced. 

“ . . . have . . .”

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Find Lois. Have fun.”

Right—like she had fun having fun anymore, Chloe thought as she rolled her eyes.

 

After her little trip down the rabbit hole with the twelve-year-old boy who became the unwitting victim of the curse John Zatara placed on a Warrior Angel comic book, Chloe decided that sleeping in was in order. She was still in her pajamas when Clark arrived with a sheepish Alec. 

They ended up having a late breakfast at a restaurant off the highway. Watching Clark connect with a child tugged at the origin of her feelings for him. When Lois told her that The Blur confided in her, she felt a stab of something that she didn’t want to examine for fear that it was jealousy. The unpacked baggage of her unrequited feelings for Clark got in the way of a more obvious truth. 

She missed her best friend. Clark had started pulling away when she was planning her wedding to Jimmy. She had understood what he was doing and even agreed that it was necessary. They had learned from Clark’s relationship with Lana that they relied on each other for things that made Clark’s relationship with Lana complicated at times. Clark understood that asking her to keep things from Jimmy would be a source of conflict, and he had been ready to let go of that without her asking.

Deep down, Chloe thought it was a period of adjustment to accommodate Jimmy.

They were never going back to being Clark and Chloe. It was good that Clark internalized aspects of their friendship. Confiding in Lois, making Lois a partner and collaborator, even if it was in a roundabout way, was the necessary thing that had been missing in his relationship with Lana. Clark needed to involve Lois in every part of his life.

And that was the way it should be, she thought as she smiled at the mock serious debate that Clark and Alec were having about pancakes versus waffles.

She worried that he was going to succeed and disconnect from humanity as he claimed when he told her that he was going to finish his training with Jor-El. But, the Clark who forgave Oliver and welcomed him back, and the Clark who was falling in love with Lois and finding ways to share every part of his life with her, and the Clark who was available to a boy who needed him, was the Clark Chloe loved.

Maybe, she didn’t need to worry about him anymore. 

And, maybe the person in their friendship who was becoming hard to recognize was her. 

After they finished breakfast and parted company in the parking lot, Chloe got in her car and drove back to The Talon. She had been beating herself up about being . . . Chloe Sullivan. 

Girl most likely to fall for clueless, carefree superhero? Been there, done that with about the same mismatch of emotional maturity from both parties. Cringing inside at how eager she had been to share her perspective on the care and maintenance of the superhero from the Watchtower. She had woken up ready to find a park bench where she could go to share her hard won ‘expertise’ and bask in man-child admiration.

Bewildered because she used to understand the difference between wanting attention and admiration and demanding respect through her actions, she had woken up feeling lost.

What was holding her back with Oliver? Why had she spent nearly two weeks thinking about something that she told herself she couldn’t have? He was available, interested, he knew how demanding her life was, and she liked him. 

What had Oliver said when they had lunch together? She knew how to deflect. If she didn’t want his attention, all she had to do was tell him. 

There were several excellent reasons to do that, and none of them seemed to apply. They weren’t colleagues. Oliver paid her salary, but he really wasn’t her boss. They served the common good as their gifts dictated and their consciences directed, and believing that, she found it reassuringly hard to imagine what could interfere with that.

Weighed against all the things they had overcome, what could come between them and the mission? For as long as she could remember, she had always known exactly how she wanted to express what she felt called to do. Being a reporter wasn’t about a by-line and being heard. It was about finding answers, exposing injustice, challenging people to do better and be better. Sometimes it was about showing people how others were making a difference, or getting useful information to people to equip them to make important decisions. 

She discovered that she liked to collaborate. A good paper encompassed the perspective of many people. One of the things she loved about her work with the Isis Foundation was finding how new people created opportunities to expand services and outreach. 

She still felt lost, but she could feel lost without feeling as if her heart was going to explode if she didn’t have something to do. She could direct a group of super-heros, and she would figure this out. The answers weren’t going to be easily found, but she had friends and meaningful work, and time.

She spent a good part of her afternoon with her phone turned off, writing. When her eyes grew heavy, she took a nap, waking to find a message on her phone from Oliver.

Talked to Clark. I’m playing Watchtower tonight. You know where to find me if you need anything.

 

It was dark when she made it to the Watchtower after putting some face time in at an Isis fundraiser. 

Every time she left the Watchtower, she had a moment when she returned where she had to gather herself. When she felt like she was walking through the quicksand of the disastrous miscalculations and failures that led to being found by Emil and Oliver with two dead men, sitting in a pool of Jimmy’s blood in a state of nearly catatonic denial. Every time. There was a part of her that wanted to just skip to the end to find that it made a difference. 

Like every other time, she took the next step past that moment with only the slightest hitch in her step, and into the present, throwing open the door because she couldn’t skip to the end, and showing up was the first step in making a difference.

She wasn’t able to contain her flinch at the sound of an arrow hitting the target. 

It was Oliver, casual in blue jeans and a t-shirt, holding one of his high-tech compound bows. 

“Slow night?” she guessed, un-pausing. The chandelier was dimmed and most of her monitors were dark.

“I figured I’d take in some target practice,” he tilted his head back a little, “And a single malt.”

Was drinking alone supposed to be a warning sign? In Oliver’s case, drinking in a club was probably more dangerous. He was as much at loose ends as she was, but he was trying. Taking Mia under his wing, attempting to reconnect with Lois, giving way graciously to Clark when that didn’t pan out for him, and resuming his unofficial role as first string on patrol. 

She smiled at him. “Did you bring enough for the rest of the class?” she asked as she walked past him.

“Help yourself, professor.”

Her smile became wry. The bottle was on a console table, and she picked it up with a spare glass before walking over to the couch. She looked up as she sat on the couch to find him watching her. 

“Running a little light on allegory tonight. Bumpy day?”

“Not the smoothest,” she admitted. She wondered what he knew about her latest misadventure. Not for the first time, she wondered why he trusted her to run things for their as yet unnamed group. If she was a better person, she would have explained why he shouldn’t.

She poured herself a drink. “Someone asked me when the last time I had a good time was,” she braced herself for the bite of the alcohol. “I didn't have an answer.”

“I don’t think anyone can fault you for being on edge, Chloe.” 

“If anyone can relate, it’s me,” he looked over his shoulder and their eyes met. Held by the sudden intensity of his gaze, she marveled that they were here with a lot less baggage and a lot more goodwill than ever seemed possible to her. Last year, they had run the gamut, and yet, it wasn’t lost on her that no matter how disappointed, angry, or betrayed Oliver felt, his first impulse was usually to try to help her, even when he didn’t agree with her. 

“Yeah,” she expelled a small, tension-relieving laugh. “You can.” She felt the muscles in her face relax. 

She gave him a small nod and toasted him silently after he turned back to the target, lining up his shot. 

“You know,” he sounded like he was concentrating on the shot, though it wasn’t complicated, “sometimes you got to take your fun where you can get it.”

He let the arrow fly. Her fingers tightened on the glass in her hand, but she didn’t flinch, and her heart rate stayed the same. It was a sound that usually meant that the cavalry had arrived—at least until Vortigen, and she was glad that despite being startled at the door, it didn’t bother her.

“And sometimes,” Oliver turned to look at her again, and she realized belatedly, that he was trying to tell her something, “it's right in front of your face.”

She tilted her head, wondering if he had any idea that she was already on the same page. 

 

‘Now you’ve really done it,’ the voice in his head was mostly exasperated, faintly disapproving, and richly sardonic. It was the voice he actively refrained from using when he was talking to his employees or to service people who were in no position to tell him to fuck off.

Closing his eyes as his fingers carded Chloe’s softly curling hair, Oliver swallowed the sound of she made—it wasn’t anything, he told himself, willing himself not to start working out how to get horizontal in five moves or less. When he was showing her how to shoot an arrow, he was painfully aware of how fragile the moment was, hyper-conscious of how she looked and felt, and how good she smelled. He had a million questions rolling around in his head. Where had she been for the last day? That was quickly followed by why had she dressed in a skirt and blouse tonight. This was not her usual casual jeans and cute top. He almost wanted her to put him out of his misery and treat him to a kind but firm ‘no way’. And why, why, _why_ had he handcuffed himself to wait for her to make a move by telling her that the next move was hers?

Sure, it worked out great when she spun around and he realized that Chloe was going for it—though he almost spoiled it because he had this crazy impulse to laugh at her when she was looking up at him like kissing him was her prize for hitting the target.

And then she went up on her toes, pulling him down to her, looking into his eyes like she was dazzled by the reflected radiance of her smile. It faded just the tiniest bit right before her eyelashes swept down and their lips met.

It was ridiculous. She tasted like milky coffee, burnt sugar, and his scotch and she smelled like something he wanted to take up residence in his nose forever, and if he thought kissing her was something he wanted to do again, he discovered that when she was all in, it was something he wanted to do all the time.

Then she touched his face, and his hands were on autopilot, taking her up into his arms, against his body, while their lips parted and came together again. 

‘Ridiculous’ the voice in his head jeered.

He ignored that stupid voice. Where was the voice when he was wallowing in guilt, drowning in booze, and burning a perfectly good hoodie? That voice was a piss useless fucker that needed to go sit in a corner and contemplate the end of being single.

Her hand on his face did something to him. Her fingers were cool and soft, and familiar. She was always touching him, except not like this. Her fingers were on his face, stroking his skin, moving down to his neck while she kissed him back, and it felt so good. Better than it should have. Possibly he was developing a fetish. He was already feverishly imagining her cool, sensitive hands all over him. 

She ducked her head a little when their lips parted and tilted her head obligingly when he reached her neck. Her hands slipped down to his upper arms, and her breath gusted against his cheek as his hand found her ass. A heartfelt groan escaped him. Her ass had played a feature role in some of his fantasies lately. 

“Oliver,” she breathed his name, pulling back a little before she turned her head to kiss him, catching the corner of his mouth. 

His eyes opened before hers, catching the contrast of her skin against the bronze green of her blouse, the sparkle of an earring nearly lost in her hair as she tilted her head back again. When her eyes opened, he smiled, because she looked like someone faced with buying something they didn’t want to pay for later. 

It was probably not a good time to tell her that he wasn’t sure that he could keep himself together for another moment if he couldn’t have her. Except, he could. He would, because it wasn’t just about what he needed. And if she needed his restraint, he was going to give it to her. But, not just yet. She was still, pliantly, in his arms. Uncertain, maybe, given the tentative way her fingertips were stroking the back of his neck. 

He had to sell this. His hands caressed her, registering cool satin over warm skin. She was pressed up against him, and there was no hiding how turned on he was. 

“So . . .” he pursed his lips. “It’s early, and,” his eyebrows rose as he looked down into her eyes. “I think there’s potential for fun,” he said.

She looked deliciously rumpled, and flushed, and from the smile she couldn’t quite suppress, he thought he had a shot.

“Ollie,” his shortened name fell from her lips. “I . . . yeah. I’d like that.”

His throat got a little tight. He kissed her to cover for his sudden inability to speak, cradling her beautiful face in his hands. He had been running from this for weeks. Flirting with Dinah. Taking a Hail Mary pass at Lois, which had gone exactly how he thought it would. Filling every available hour with activity while he searched for purpose.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Where?”

He knew where he wanted to go. He untangled one of her dangling earrings from a curl and got distracted by the velvety soft edge of her earlobe. The way that she moved her head hinted that her neck was sensitive.

Conversation was overrated, he decided, when her lips brushed his again and she nibbled on his lower lip until the only thing that would feel right was to kiss her back. 

“You are really good at that,” he said, impressed.

She grinned back at him, preening a little. “I’ve got moves, Ollie.”

She tilted her head, eyebrows rising in question. “Couch?” she suggested.

“Depends on what you’ve got in mind,” he countered. They had spent a lot of time on that couch. Talking. Eating. Hanging out. He didn’t want to get sidetracked into a comfortable round of what they normally did. The couch was a trap. 

He had turned off the monitors for a reason. The longer they stayed here, the more likely it was that something would happen that would distract her.

She eased back, a frown forming. “Okay . . .” she said. “I’m misreading this, aren’t I?”

“Nope,” he shook his head. “Misreading what?”

She shook her head. “You, _seducing_ me, or whatever you playboy types call it,” her nose wrinkled. “Hook up is a little—“

He shook his head, “Juvenile,” he supplied as she started to look like she was going to retreat to the couch.

He grabbed her wrist, “Oh, I’m . . . seducing the hell out of you,” he retorted as he reeled her back in. “But, look around. We’re here. Watchtower. And since your place is three hours away--

“Not the way you drive,” she muttered.

He chuckled, conceding the point, before remembering other objections to her place, “Then there is the color scheme from The Flintstones, the fact that people drop in on you without calling—“

“That’s mostly you,” she told him.

“Lois?”

Chloe gave him a look. “She lives there Oliver—not that I’m arguing for my place.”

Oliver nodded. “So, it’s my place.”

She bit her lip, thinking about it as he pressed up against her back, brushing her hair away from her neck. “I sleep here sometimes,” she said.

“Yeah, and people barge in at all hours,” he pointed out.

She made a face, laughing a little. “Also, mostly you,” she told him, closing her eyes as he kissed her neck. “You are around a lot.”

“Uh huh,” he grinned, feeling her shiver as he nuzzled her neck. 

She had never really been a neck person, but she was ready to sign on now as his lips and tongue brought up gooseflesh that skipped around her best bits, amplified by the slippery material of her blouse shifting against her skin. He was really good at that. 

“I have condoms at my place,” he said. 

Smooth, the voice in his head snorted.

Chloe laughed. “ _Wow_. Does that usually work?”

“Hmm?” His left hand cupped her breast and his blunt fingers went for her nipple, rolling it between his fingers under the satin of her blouse and the lace of her bra while his arm tightened around her waist. 

“Well, it’s the principal of it. I don’t think women should be responsible for being responsible.”

She turned her head to look at him, and got kissed for the effort. “That’s kind of—“ she turned in his arms, sliding one of her arms around his waist, pouting a little when his hand left her breast, “progressive,” she breathed.

“I’m all about the girl power,” he smirked, resting his forehead against hers. “In fact, if you want to be on top, I promise you I won’t put up a fight.”

Her giggle was met by his lips, and she threaded her fingers in his hair, kissing him back, tasting Scotch. 

“Maybe we don’t need them,” she said between kisses. 

His hands cupped her bottom. “That’s crazy talk,” he scoffed. “Who is seducing who here, huh?”

She didn’t have an answer for that. “Oliver . . .”

“No,” he gave a spare shake of his head. “Get your jacket and your purse—or whatever, and let’s get the hell out of here. We can have the ‘should we, shouldn’t we’ conversation over a really expensive bottle of wine someplace where clothing is required.”

On so many levels, it was a bad idea, Chloe reminded herself as her gaze shifted. If they slowed things down to be sensible and rationale, she was going to end up in flannel pajamas wondering what happened. She let her forehead come to a rest against his chest. God. He smelled good. His hand rubbed the back of her neck and she felt his cheek against her head. 

He lowered his head, nudging her back a little to make her look at him. “Do you see where I’m coming from? Before we try something as adventurous as a quickie at the office, I’m thinking a more controlled environment, a bottle of obscenely expensive wine, and we see where that takes us?”

Her chin went a little wobbly at the way he was looking at her, and she had to press her lips together as her throat tightened.

“O-okay,” she croaked. 

“Yeah?” he smiled at her. “I’ve got a spare toothbrush,” he said. 

She blinked away the moisture that was making her feel like her eyes were swimming and summoned up enough attitude to roll her eyes. “I bet you’ve got a spare toothbrush.” 

He gave her a smile and a little lift of his eyebrows. “Actually, got it for you after the last time you stayed over. Always prepared for those little emergencies, Chloe,” he said as he hooked his wrist around her neck, taking a step backward. He ran both hands down her bare arms. “Where is your jacket?” he gave her a considering look, “or maybe you ought to go trench coat. It’s the on-trend look for the slink away after awesome sex for this spring.”

“Oliver . . . you are setting yourself up for . . .” she got a little stuck on what he was setting himself up for. Less than awesome sex?

“Yeah,” he drawled, “that doesn’t really work, does it?” he teased. “First, there is me,” he feigned modest pride. 

She pulled away from him to get her jacket, and then her purse. 

“And then there is an obscenely expensive bottle of wine,” and after that, of course, she had to put Watchtower on sleep mode since turning off the monitors didn’t turn anything off except the monitors. She sighed inwardly at having to walk around tomorrow turning each monitor back on. 

“800 thread count sheets,” Oliver continued to enumerate all of the reasons why it was going to be awesome. 

“—oh,” he cocked a finger at her, “I’ve been wanting to try that KY-Excite stuff. You know what I’m talking about? K-Y. Kind of gives it away, right? No? Hmm . . . you’ll Google it. I’m thinking we should probably do it without and then try it—“

“C’mon, Romeo,” she tilted her head in the direction of the exit. “I’m starting to wonder if you actually need anything but your imagination to make this work for you.”

He grabbed his own jacket, slipping it on as they exited. “Can I get back to you on that after I’ve seen you naked?”

At the elevator, Chloe shook her head at him. “Oh, you are hilarious,” she told him.

He looked awfully happy for someone who was risking a lot with his whole, ‘let’s slow down and talk about this’ approach. 

“So, we are going to your place?” she got her keys out of her purse. 

Logistically, that posed a problem. He had banked on having dinner with Chloe, so he was hungry. 

“Are you hungry?”

He looked so hopeful, that Chloe sighed. “I could eat.”

He wrapped his arms around her from behind, kissing the top of her head. “Yeah? I’m starving,” Oliver admitted. “So . . . we go to the grocery and get food, or we order something in, or we go sit across from each other at a diner—“

“I don’t think that they serve things you eat at diners,” Chloe told him.

“Swann Street,” Oliver countered. “The late night menu has a breakfast skillet with a bacon wrapped fillet under a poached egg and hollandaise. Or—“

Her stomach growled under his hand, and he chuckled. “Picked a winner?”

“If this evening ends with me in flannel listening to Lois snore, your playboy street cred is going down,” she warned.

The elevator chimed as they reached the lobby. Swann Street was closer to Oliver’s place, and her car was already off the street in the garage. Chloe put her keys away when Oliver pulled her over to his car. 

They had shared a late meal at Swann Street before, so it was nothing new to walk the two blocks over and find a table in the back after Oliver garaged his car at his building. They didn’t bother with the menu. He ordered the egg sandwich and oven roasted potatoes. Chloe went with the breakfast special. 

She waited until their server departed with their orders, and then adjusted to sit on her foot. It gave her an extra four inches, and she needed a few extra inches to lean across the table. 

“Talk,” she pointed at him. “How do you see this going?”

He leaned forward until she was close enough to kiss. “Chloe? I’m not having face-to-face phone sex with you in a diner,” he said in his most reasonable smart-ass tone.

She tried to keep a straight face and failed. She tipped forward as a surprising dirty, sexy laugh sputtered from her.

He adopted a mock thoughtful expression. “No phone? Face-to-face? I guess that’s just foreplay, huh?” he whispered. 

“For normal people,” she scoffed. “For you, it’s probably just interfering with your schedule.”

He shook his head, exasperated. “Okay, let’s get that out of the way. With all of your ‘keeping a watchful eye’ on people, I’m guessing you’ve probably seen some of my less than stellar moments.” 

“Ollie—“

“Nope. I get it. I’m a little . . . shop worn—“

She shook her head. “I’m just teasing you,” she protested.

He bit his lip, looking up at the ceiling. “All those other women . . . I guess that kind of makes me . . . I mean, objectively, and totally factoring in that I’m loaded, how hot am I?” he asked, keeping a straight face. “Because falling down drunk and disheveled, I’m a freaking chick magnet,” he said.

She eased back down on her side, shaking her head, smiling at how ridiculous he was. 

“No words, huh?”

She laughed. “Pretty much.”

He rubbed his jaw. “Yeah? Interesting. You never seemed all that impressed with me.”

She tilted her head to the side. “Likewise.”

“I almost asked you out once,” he said.

She looked like she didn’t believe him. 

He nodded. 

“When was this?”

“Rooftop, when we met Canary,” he said. “You were so matter-of-fact about everything until you realized that you scuffed your shoe, and I said something like ‘maybe you should wear shoes that you can actually run in’ and you—“he pointed to her, “threatened to beat me to death with your shoe. I thought you were—“

“Adorable,” she made a face.

“Pretty much,” he admitted. “I usually don’t go for adorable. It was a big moment for me.”

“So, you came to your senses, huh?”

He shrugged. “Clark was so mad about why you were on the rooftop that I figured I had antagonized him enough for at least a year.”

Their food arrived, and her coffee was there. Chloe emptied two containers of cream into it and took a sip before adding a half a packet of cane sugar. The next sip was perfection, and she savored it.

He was watching her with a small smile of his own. 

The breakfast special was a casserole dish layered with hashbrowns, scrambled eggs, diced tomatoes, and bacon crumbles. Chloe picked at it while Oliver ate with obvious hunger. 

She thought he was teasing when he said that he had almost asked her out once, and the specificity of it convinced her otherwise. She and Jimmy were still in a pretty rocky place back then, but Lois really wasn’t over Oliver yet. It would have been weird, she decided.

“This is not a date,” she said slowly.

Oliver’s eyebrows rose. He took a sip of water before agreeing. “No kidding. I don’t bring dates to Swann Street.”

“Just saying. Not a date. We aren’t dating.”

“You seem adamant about that,” he said. “Talk to me about what we are doing?”

“Breakfast for dinner,” she said, and then frowned at Ollie’s patently patient expression. 

Unfortunately, she had nearly a decade of experience decoding Clark and then Lois’ relationships. Duh! Maybe it wasn’t a date, but it was a meal served with a boatload of flirting and relationship talk, so it was date-ish.

“We’re . . . figuring out how to have fun,” Chloe amended. “Without dating.”

He smiled at her, figuring this was a warning shot. She was so hung up on defining them. It was kind of cute. 

“More coffee?” he asked, seeing the waiter with the pot.

“Mm-huh,” she nodded, still thinking while Oliver gestured to the waiter to get his attention. 

She tilted her head to one side. “Actually it’s scary how much this is like a date,” she admitted. “This is why I have to assert that it is not a date, because I’m not doing that again.”

“Dating?” he clarified, deciding not to re-assert that this was not his idea of a place he’d take her on a date, even as his mind started wandering down that track. 

“Exactly,” she nodded. 

“It’s not like it’s a big deal,” he threw out there suddenly, wary about setting the bar so low that anything that they did together outside of Watchtower would be construed as a date. 

“We’re adults, and we aren’t doing anything wrong.”

“We’re just enjoying each other’s company.”

“With no strings, no expectations, no pressure—“

His eyebrows lifted, “That’s quite a list. So, we aren’t telling anyone about this?”

Chloe’s eyes widened a little. “God, no!” with a shudder at the possible reactions.

He laughed, having no trouble following that train of thought. “I get it. No drama.”

She sat back, smiling now that it appeared that he was on the same page.

He was watching her with a small smile of his own. 

Normally, a late dinner made her wilt, but she felt keyed up even more than coffee would account for. Oliver didn’t seem to notice, but after the check was paid, and they were leaving, he paused with her on the sidewalk. 

“So?” he asked. “Flannel and snoring or do I get to break out the expensive wine?”

She cocked her head to one side. “Did you really buy a toothbrush for me?”

He chuckled. “I really did.”

She nodded. “Your place.”

 

 

“Now this is more what I had in mind,” Oliver said as he kicked off his jeans. 

Chloe scooted back on the bed. A moment ago, it seemed dark in the bedroom, but what little light there was seemed to find him. She bit her kiss swollen lower lip, feeling breathless and reckless in a way she rarely indulged as Oliver crawled toward her. She put her foot on his thigh, feeling the way his muscles moved as her foot slid up to his hip. He wrapped his fingers around her ankle and pulled her down toward him, pushing her legs apart as his head bent.

His mouth was hot on the inside of her thigh. 

After they arrived at Oliver’s place, he turned on the gas fireplace on the balcony and they sipped wine out on the terrace. Chloe was sure that her panties, shoes, and his t-shirt were still out there. It was a good thing that they went out to dinner to get all the talking out of the way. 

Her body arched as his fingers found her, his thumb rubbing her clit. “Mmm, you are so wet,” he crooned. “I want your legs over my shoulders, Chloe.”

“And I want a pony,” Chloe retorted. That bottle of wine might have been a mistake. She was a little buzzed.

His head popped up. “Perv.”

“Ew! So gross,” she said, giggling. “I’m not a porn star, Ollie. If my legs accidentally ended up over your shoulders—“

He was shaking his head. “Please stop talking. I’m already mentally dressing you in stockings and those amazing pumps you wore when we met Canary.”

Diverted, she gaped at him. “How on earth do you remember the shoes I wore two years ago?”

“I told you that I was going to ask you out,” he reminded her. “And you threatened me with them.”

“Oh,” she remembered. “Those were Cole Hahn, too. Honestly, they should have lasted until I was practically geriatric. Unlike you, I don’t need a costume to do my job.”

His potentially snarky response was lost in a lip-biting groan as he slipped his finger into her. He nuzzled her stomach. “It’s kind of cliché,” he attempted, “but, yeah . . .”

“Yeah, what?” 

“Tight,” he said roughly. “Tightly wound. Uptight. Smart. Bossy,” he punctuated each word with his finger thrusting inside of her. “God. I knew,” he muttered. “I _knew_.”

“You knew what?” Chloe asked, bewildered.

He smirked. “I knew that you’d be amazing in bed,” he said.

She gave him a skeptical look. “Right. You _knew_ ,” she rolled her eyes.

He kissed the inside of her hipbone. “Yep,” he said cheerfully. “You said something like, ‘do I tell you how to shoot your little arrows?’” he recalled, “and I thought—“he paused, frowning. “No . . . that wasn’t it. That was kind of gross, with your eyes rolling back in your head and your nose bleeding—“

“Good times,” she deadpanned. 

“Well, I knew,” he insisted, penetrating her with a second finger, and watching her bite her lip as he moved his fingers in and out of her. He was ready to call the expression on her face 'better-than-coffee' when he looked up from where he was making sure her nipples weren’t actually cold.

It came to him then. It was at Isis when she took up Watchtower full-time. She said something about how he knew what he really wanted, and his reaction was almost comically inappropriate given the context.

She pulled him up to her. “Come on, Oliver. Everything is working. Let’s do this.”

“Let’s do this?” he repeated. 

“I haven’t had an orgasm that I wasn’t personally responsible for in a while,” she huffed. “And when I do, I’d prefer it if you were inside me.”

He just stared at her for a moment. That voice in his head was back, warning him not to say what was going through his head no matter how bad he wanted to see that.

“Are you close?”

She squirmed and nodded. “Uh-huh,” she breathed. 

That merited another long, slow kiss. 

“Okay . . .” there were condoms in the table next to the bed. He _hated_ not having superpowers. Or extra hands. 

“I’m going to—“

She grabbed his face with both hands. “Focus, Ollie. If I have an orgasm right now,” she bit her lip, drawing a deep, shaky breath. “I’m going to be a little disappointed that your participation is limited to something I do all by myself.”

“Okay, condom,” he said, moving across the bed to the table. 

“If it’s not great, we should probably do it again, just to make sure that it wasn’t a fluke,” she said when he was back.

“Because . . .”

“The first time you have sex with someone it can be . . . why are you looking at me like I’m crazy?”

“Have you formed this theory from personal experience? Because if you have, you really are too nice for your own good.”

“Fine,” she huffed. “If it’s not good, I’m out of here, and if it isn’t good for you, you can—“

He kissed her to cut her off, and kept kissing her until they were both breathless and he was easing his way into her. 

She tensed up a little, and he rubbed her nose with his, holding her gaze. “It’s just me, Chloe,” he said. “Do you have any idea how crazy I am about you?”

She looked worried. “Ollie—“

Bracing on one elbow, he shifted, running his hand down her side to get her to open up more. She went with it, bending her knees and opening her legs more. 

He hated it that she looked worried.

Sliding his hand under her neck, he stroked her neck with his thumb, kissing her softly as she started moving with him. Her hands told him what she needed, and tried to give back what she felt. 

She didn’t tell him if she came, and he didn’t ask after he did. Lying on his back, catching his breath after, he played with her fingers, willing himself not to push.

“We’re doing that again,” she announced.

He chuckled, nodding. “Yep,” he agreed, turning his head to look at her. “When we are on the same page, we’re amazing.”

She curled into his side, kissing his shoulder. 

She still looked worried, but when their eyes met, she smiled. “Where is this famous toothbrush?” she asked.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Link to banner: http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/bkwurm1/12629216/19850/19850_900.jpg

Chloe Sullivan woke up naked in Oliver Queen’s bed, knowing exactly where she was, and what had transpired there. She woke up alone, but not lonely. The sun was rising, the windows had been opened a few inches to let in air to dispel the stale scent of sex, and she was otherwise surrounded in sheets, a miraculously lofty duvet, and pillows that smelled like the back of Oliver’s neck. 

With a rueful smile, she remembered telling Lois that her weekend getaway to Monte Carlo with Oliver was a fairy tale. After a night of being kissed and fondled within an inch of her life, she was willing to amend that. Monte Carlo was not necessary.

Rolling over to the middle of the bed, she hugged a pillow to her, tucking her face under it to block the sunlight. The context of his scent had changed overnight. It wasn’t as if she had failed to notice that Oliver smelled good. Over the last few years it had become familiar. Oliver smelled like sandalwood and leather, ink and paper, sweat and fabric softener and warm skin, coffee and cinnamon. She associated it with his presence, and knew every version of Oliver’s scent—even the liquored up version—as safety wrapped in comfort, support, collaboration, and friendship. 

Yep, all that and orgasms, too. 

The side of the bed behind her dipped and she felt her heart trip. Too soon. She was still half asleep and she hadn’t even begun to catalog how she felt about last night. She couldn’t remember the last time she slept so well. 

His arm gathered her, puffy duvet and all while his other hand cradled the back of her neck. He kissed her bare shoulder. “I started coffee for you,” he said.

Chloe hummed an acknowledgement. That made sense. Oliver didn’t smell like coffee and cinnamon, just cinnamon and something spicy, and he was making coffee. Possibly because he was a God among men, or just reasonably smart, plus he had good manners . . . she smiled at her own musings.

“I really, really love coffee,” she said into the pillow.

He laughed. “I know you do, baby,” he said.

Making a face at ‘baby’, Chloe decided to table how she felt about that—there was a fluttery little ‘aw!’ mixed up with an ‘oh, no!’ that was backed up by a vague feeling of ‘baby’ being a miss. She didn’t want to be anyone’s baby. It was probably habit. Poor Ollie, waking up with a woman whose name he knew without having to check her ID while she was sleeping it off. He had probably just gone to a safety endearment out of habit.

She continued stretching to work the kinks out of her spine. Oliver gave an assist. He rubbed her back, following her spine with the heel of his hand, rubbing in circles as she yawned hugely, drawing her knees up and then slowly extending her legs. It didn’t help with waking up. She felt boneless, and sleepy, and warm, and very turned on. 

The longest time she had ever gone without sex was between her engagement party and now. Until now, she hadn’t really felt deprived. She had known that she was deprived, but Oliver was a little like going without chocolate and not realizing how good chocolate was until you had a taste, and then you had to have more.

The more she thought about, the less annoyed she was with him for calling her baby. He could probably call her princess right now and her lust would live on. 

She rolled over on her stomach when Oliver’s hand reached her butt. Around two in the morning she had gotten up, gone to the bathroom, and started thinking about her exit strategy. When she came out of the bathroom, he was watching her from his bed.

“There’s a toothbrush on the counter for you,” he said, patting the space beside him. 

She had washed the remnants of her make-up off, brushed her teeth, and told herself to kiss him good night and go find her clothes even as he pulled her back down to bed, spooning behind her with a happy, sleepy sigh, finding her hand, and uncurling her fingers.

And her exit strategy died before it ever formed. She resolved not to make a habit of it, assuming that this wasn't a one-time thing. 

Chloe was starting to see the upside. Oliver kissed the center of her back, nudging her legs apart as his hand slipped between her legs. She bit her kiss swollen lower lip as they both discovered how wet she was. 

She still smelled coffee and cinnamon, and smiled at how her brain was tangling sex up with hot, gooey cinnamon rolls just as his stroking fingers coaxed her into opening her legs for him. She was a little sore. She couldn’t quite keep from flinching as his finger penetrated her. He nuzzled her back down to the base of her spine, gently easing his finger out of her. 

She stretched again, reaching for the headboard with one hand as she rolled to her side, opening her eyes to blink against the light, and shut them again, pushing back the duvet with her other hand, shivering at the introduction of cool air against her warm skin. Her nipples contracted to taut buds. Her hand brushed his shoulder, and then drifted down over his bare chest before retreating to his neck, finding the rough track of a scabbed over cut on his neck, and the coarse crispness of his hair against her fingertips. 

She opened one eye enough to squint at him. “Baby?”

Her critique was completely lost on him. His lips captured a rosy nipple, sending a corresponding pull from his lips on her nipple to her navel. He was half dressed, from the waist down, wearing a pair workout pants that weren’t nearly as pleasant on the inside of her thighs as his bare skin. His hands were roaming freely, keeping the chill of the morning air at bay. His lips tugged on her nipple until it left his mouth and then he laved it, taking possession of it again while his right hand cupped her neglected breast. 

“Ollie,” she breathed his name. 

His mouth left her nipple again and he covered it with his fingers, pressing a tender kiss into the tight, delicate skin where her breast met her breastbone. 

The smell of coffee was obscured by the stronger scent of cinnamon. “Is there really coffee?” she asked.

“Mm-hm,” he nuzzled her throat. “Metro Coffee house blend,” he said. “And cinnamon rolls,” he added when he reached her jaw. His covered pelvis met hers. “Please tell me that it can wait,” he said.

A musical chime trilled, and he tensed, running his hands down her legs as her ankles started to cross behind his back. “Damn it,” he muttered, easing back to look down at her. 

She pouted. He was still holding her ankles, leaving her entirely exposed. She should have felt vulnerable or at least self-conscious, but the look in his eyes was so nakedly hungry, that she and her goose bumps didn’t feel anything but warmly appreciated. 

“Be a hero and go save breakfast,” she said as his hands stroked her legs down to her knees and his head descended. 

The stubble on his chin scraped her thigh. His hands slid down to her butt, squeezing as he held her and his tongue delved between her legs. 

Her brief career as uninhibited temptress got a huge green light. She bucked under his mouth, moaning as he licked her. “I’m not done with you,” he murmured against her before kissing her clit. 

He gave her bottom a squeeze. “Don’t go anywhere,” he said, heaving himself off the bed to go deal with buzzer in the kitchen.

Chloe’s wide eyes followed him out of the room before she released the pent up breath she had been holding in a frustrated moan. She heard him chuckle, and glared after him. Then she flipped him off for leaving her like this. 

Shivering with cold and over stimulation, she was half tempted to pick up where he left off, but she got out of bed instead and went to the bathroom to brush her teeth and run his brush through her hair. Coming out of the bedroom, she was met by a naked Oliver, sporting an impressive erection. She felt a vague burst of surprise tangled up with an urge to giggle. For a guy who wasn’t a super charged meta-human, he looked like a life sized sex action figure. 

“Crisis averted?” she deflected, not quite as at ease about parading around naked as he was.

He crooked a finger. “C’mere,” he invited, backing up to the bed. He flipped his hand over, waiting for her to take it.

“Ollie,” she let him pull her down on his lap. 

“Couple of things,” he prefaced. His eyes were everywhere, intent, thoughtful—he might have been making a mission plan or sketching a new weapon design. His gaze shifted to meet her eyes. “Get enough sleep?”

She nodded slowly.

“Good.” 

He swung her over, lowering her to the bed. His hand cradled her head as he kissed her while his other hand caressed the inside of her thigh. Chloe shifted closer, running her hands over his back. He nibbled on her lower lip while she traced a hipbone with her thumb. 

“Don’t you have to go to work?” she asked.

“Yep,” his head lifted. He captured her gaze, watching her eyelids flutter with a delicate shudder of pleasure as his fingertips massaged her clit. “I always make time for you,” he said, mumbling against her skin as he kissed her. 

One of her eyebrows lifted, conveying good humored skepticism about that claim. 

His middle finger penetrated her while his lips brushed hers. “You are number one on my speed dial,” he said as her skeptical expression melted away. He was amused to find himself on the receiving end of her really good coffee face—eyes half closed, as she turned her body into to him, rubbing against his shoulder and chest like a cat.

“Is it good, Chloe?”

She lifted her head, following his mouth, “More,” she whispered, kissing his chin when she missed his lips, wrapping her fingers around his cock. 

He helped her out on the angle, tucking his chin so she could reach his lips, rotating his thumb over her with just the right amount of pressure as he worked a second finger into her. 

He moved between her legs. A moment later he was sinking into her. She eagerly rolled her hips up, tucking her knees on either side of his chest, shuddering at the almost painful fullness. Above her, Oliver’s head hung, his eyes closed, his expression a mask of pleasure and anticipation. She wrapped her legs around him, feeling something, like a forgotten well of sweetness, overflow. She found herself touching his face, tracing the shape of his eyebrow, feeling the roughness of stubble graze her palm, seeing sunlight warm the gold in his hair while realizing that it was messy from her fingers. 

He turned his head and she traced his lips with her thumb until he caught it, pulling it into his mouth. He rocked against her, almost like he was warning her that he was going to start moving. 

His retreat was breathtakingly slow. His hands held her head. When he was almost gone, she arched her back and cried out at as he filled her again. 

“Ollie,” she tried to get him to move faster. God. She hoped he would take a hint before she had to start telling him what to do. 

He shook his head, combing his fingers through the hair at the nape of her neck. “Relax. We have plenty of time. I’m not going anywhere. We don’t have to have sex like porn stars to impress each other,” the backs of his fingers brushed her cheek. “Just give this a few minutes, really slow? And if it isn’t working for you, we’ll see how bendy you are.”

She frowned at that. “I’m not.”

“Bendy?” he guessed, rolling his eyes. “Yeah,” he scoffed, “that’s like issuing a challenge,” he muttered as he tugged her head to the side. “There’s this spot on your neck that I really want to kiss.” His thumb traced it until she was shivering and turning her head. 

Each slow thrust introduced her to a new aspect of the way they came together. There was the weight of him, carefully balanced between his elbows and his hips to keep from crushing her. As she relaxed her legs, she felt the muscles in his bunching and releasing. She became aware of his arms, framing her, flexing, veins standing out in startling definition. 

A different kind of tension started to coil inside her with the sinuous roll of his hips, and the hint of urgency that crept into their slow climb. She found herself bracing her feet on the bed, locking her hands against his arms as she lifted her hips to meet him. 

When she slid her hand down between them to touch herself, he didn’t object, or complain, or look like she found him wanting. He made room for her to touch herself, and he watched, sliding his arm under the small of her back to change the angle in a way that had her moaning into his shoulder. 

“Don’t stop,” she begged, somehow knowing that he was close. 

He jerked her hips against him, higher, tighter, and suddenly it was like the force they had created together took over and it was hard and fierce, crashing together while her mind went blissfully blank and her every muscle in her body clenched in one long spasm before releasing. She flung her arm around his neck and hung on as he drove into her until he shuddered through his own climax. 

He rolled off of her, onto his back, sucking air. 

“That was . . .” he shook his head, at a loss for an adjective. 

Chloe could only hug herself and nod. “Yep,” she chirped, and then snickered at the chirpiness of her own voice. God. “It didn’t suck.”

“Very funny,” he said, looking over at her. She was red faced and sweaty, rubbing her arms and shivering, but she was smiling, and he was glad to be a part of putting that smile on her face. “You may think that you sound sarcastic, but at least eighty percent of the awesome was me,” he said, rolling on his side.

She gave him an exasperated look, but she didn’t stop smiling, even when her eyes closed. 

“I’m on an oxytocin high over here,” Oliver said. “Cuddling?” he teased. “You know you want to, Chloe. I thought you and my favorite pillow were going to announce that you were dating.”

He pulled her over to him and took over rubbing her arms for her after she crossed her arms on his chest and rested her chin on them. “Your pillow had a little more give,” she snarked.

He looked smug. “I broke it in myself. Remember last year when I got knifed in the back, and I had those stitches?” 

Some of her Brainiac infected months were a little hazy, but she remembered that. She laughed, also remembering the deer-in-the-headlights expression on his face when she told him to take off his shirt. It was a little odd that one of their trust milestones was established when she didn’t develop a crush on him based on exposure to his bare chest. She had picked up an ointment at the pharmacy that was supposed to minimize scaring and help control the itching associated with stiches, and he bitched about it because he insisted that it made him smell like onions.

She told him that he was crazy, and he kept insisting at random times that she had to smell him because he couldn’t understand why he smelled onions and she smelled nothing.

The whole time, she was lying. He really did smell like onions, but she figured that it was a small price to pay for product testing a wound treatment that looked promising. 

He wasn’t sure why she was laughing, but he plucked at the pillow wedged behind his head to remind her that they were talking about his pillow. “I had to sleep on my stomach, but I hate sleeping on my stomach, so I had this guy folded in half length-wise and—“

She looked appalled. “Are you telling me that is your _armpit_ pillow?”

He thought about that. “Well, yeah I guess it was, but I think folding it in half really is the important part for breaking it in.” 

His hands moved to her shoulders, his fingers playing with the ends of her hair. There was something about the cut, and the sunny yellow of it that reminded him of a cartoon character, though he couldn’t remember which one. He liked the idea of her as a cartoon character. It made her less garden variety gorgeous, and more adorably quirky. 

He grinned at her. “I had this theory about your hair.”

Her nose wrinkled. “Do I want to know?”

“When it’s all fluffed and curled—it looks like sex hair, and—“

She met his eyes, “But, not so much, huh?”

He shrugged. “Actually, pretty close.” 

He finger combed her hair until her eyes were half closed. “Mmm, very sexy,” he said, congratulating himself on his discovery. He had noticed that she was pretty, and sometimes he thought she was really cute in a brainy pocket sized way, and there had been a few times when he felt an odd little tug in his chest at how beautiful she was. When she smiled? Gorgeous. Sexy was something she kept buried. Though, now that he had seen it, he thought it was going to be impossible to miss.

“Eighty percent, huh?” she gave him a look. 

“Do you want to go back to sleep?” he asked. “I’ve got to take a shower and get dressed for work. Do you need to get in the bathroom first? There is another bathroom, down the hall.”

She had spent enough time here over the years to know where everything was, down to his secret weapons locker. Hearing him ramble, she read a little nervousness, and felt strangely moved by it.

She pouted again, re-prioritizing her morning. “I can’t believe you distracted me from coffee with sex,” she complained. “There is coffee?”

He laughed. “Yes!” he slid out from under her, snorting when she grabbed his pillow. “Don’t get too attached,” he warned as he grabbed his pants and put them on. He opened a drawer to find a t-shirt for her, shaking it out to decide if it was going to provide adequate coverage before he tossed it to her. 

She put it on and crossed the bed to the side closest to the bathroom, looking disgusted when she encountered a wet spot. 

When she came out of the bathroom, the duvet and most of the pillows were piled at the top of the bed while the sheets and pillow cases were balled up at the bottom. Oliver carried the sheets into the laundry room adjacent to the kitchen, loading the washer as she made her way to the kitchen, flinching at his cold fancy stained concrete floor. She found a coffee cup in one of the cabinets and filled her cup. 

Before Watchtower, she had worked out of the Clocktower when it was inconvenient to run Ops from her hub at Isis. The penthouse suite had been renovated at least twice since then following Canary’s introduction to the team and after Oliver’s most recent trip though the gutter, but the kitchen was more or less as she remembered.

Oliver came in behind her, passing her with a friendly pat on her ass at the refrigerator while he reached for an oven mitt. 

He opened the oven and frowned. “Huh. Probably should have taken these out,” he said as he pulled out an aluminum tray of cinnamon rolls that were reduced to little blackened disks. He frowned at them. “Do you think that something went wrong before I turned off the oven?” he asked as he showed her the pan.

“You have to let them rise first, then bake,” she said, recognizing the brand of rolls. 

He shook his head. “Well, that’s ridiculous,” he said, throwing them out. “I’ve got something else. Just,” he shooed her. “Go sit.” He laced his fingers, cracking his knuckles. “I have to create.”

There was a stool that doubled as a kitchen ladder. Chloe sat and watched while he pulled four tumblers down from the cabinet before going to the refrigerator and returning with a half-gallon of juice, a tub of Greek yogurt and a plastic bowl of mixed fruit. She shook her head while she watched him assemble two yoghurt and fruit cups with a scoop of granola from a canister on the counter. 

It was probably part of his evil plan for making her eat something healthy when what she really wanted was a cinnamon roll, or a bagel smothered in cream cheese. Her stomach growled.

“Do you want to eat in here, or go outside?” he asked.

She looked down at her bare legs. “Seriously?”

He smirked. “I think your panties are out there, so seriously,” he retorted, leading the way to the table. “Hey! Found your skirt,” he called out, spotting it on the coffee table. “Bra. I wouldn’t have pegged you as someone who was likely to be flinging their clothes around.”

“I had help,” she huffed.

She scooped her bra up off the floor and laid it on the back of a chair before retrieving her other scattered items of clothing. Her panties and her shoes were still missing.

He used the remote to turn on the television, turning the volume down as he flicked through pre-sets to a business news channel. “Chloe? While I’m in the shower, could you do a digest for me? Just feed me the top of the trees view of stuff I’m reasonably expected to know about the world today. People and their freaking expectations,” he muttered eying the ticker at the bottom of the screen. “Damn it!” he blew out a breath through his teeth, “I knew that was going to tank when the T-bill rate went up.” He shook his head at having his hunch confirmed. 

She looked up at him; amused at the way he read the ticker like it was . . . sports statistics, or something else that she found obscure and impenetrable. 

“International, national, local, headlines and politics?” she ticked off. 

“Yeah,” his eyebrows rose at something else he discerned from the ticker. 

She nodded around a spoonful of yogurt and fruit. He kissed the top of her head before taking a seat across from her where he had an unimpeded view of the television screen and the balcony windows at his back. As soon as she finished the yogurt and her first cup of coffee she got up to wake up his computer and returned to the kitchen to get another cup of coffee. He brought her untouched glass of juice over and told her that he was going to take a shower.

She skimmed news sites for business, politics, world events, and local events in Metropolis and Star City, typing up a summary with links and sending it to his cellphone. 

Gathering up her clothing, she refilled her coffee cup and went back to the bedroom. Oliver’s bathroom was divided into two areas. There was a double vanity in front of a wall of closet space and through another door, the shower and commode shared one side opposite a claw footed tub and a wall of vintage apothecary shelves. Unlike the freezing cold bathroom floor, the floor in both halves of the bath was teak, and the bathroom proper’s floor was heated and there were several thick spa mats. He was running an electric shaver over his chin when she came in and set her coffee cup down on the counter. 

He watched in the mirror as she shut the door behind her. A few minutes later he heard the toilet flush and then, the shower came on. He ran his hand over his jaw to make sure that he hadn’t missed a spot, and used the brush from his kit to clean the heads before stowing them in their case. He started getting dressed, selecting a tie from the closet and then holding it up in front of a line of shirts until he hit a combination that looked right. He repeated the process with his suits.

He was aware that he was dawdling. His first meeting was at 10:30, and that wasn’t so far away. Almost right on cue, his landline rang. He picked it up in the bedroom. It was Julia, his PA, reminding him that he had a 10:30 meeting.

“I’ll be there,” he said.

“Would you like me to send a car for you, Mr. Queen?”

“I’ve got time. I’ll walk, but thanks anyway. I’m probably going to stop and get a cup of coffee. Do you want anything?” he asked.

“No, sir,” she said.

Julia was promoted out of a Luthor Corp division. He hadn’t quite broken her out of the habit of being overly deferential. “Okay . . . I’m going to have lunch in, so place an order for me. I want salad, something in the citrus family, and six ounces of protein, grilled, otherwise, surprise me,” he instructed. “Oh, and I’m going to want the quarterly reports to read on the plane, so get that organized and throw it to my dropbox.”

“Got it,” she said. “Anything else?”

“That’s it for now. There’s more, but we’ll go over it when I get there,” he said, hearing the door to the bathroom open. “I’ve got to go. I’ll be there before 10:30,” he said.

Chloe had a towel wrapped around her and another wrapped in a turban around her head. She took a sip of her cooling coffee and grimaced. 

He pointed to her. “I think your shoes are outside,” he said. “I’ll go get them. Do you want me to warm that up in the microwave?” he asked.

“Yeah, that would be great,” she handed him the cup and started unwrapping her hair to towel it dry while he went to the kitchen to microwave her coffee, doubling back to the laundry room to punch the start button on the load of sheets. One of the quirks to the Clocktower penthouse was that the renovations to the century old building had overextended the plumbing, and running the washing machine sometimes had an unpredictable effect on the water pressure in the bathroom. It was one of several reasons why he had been finding the penthouse less than ideal lately. 

He went out on the balcony to find Chloe’s abandoned shoes and to collect wine glasses. The balcony was his favorite spot, but it was only useful for half the year. He checked the cushions on the sofa, but her panties were MIA.

He went back to the kitchen for her coffee and decided to give it another fifteen-second blast. 

Chloe was mostly dressed and shaking out her damp hair, finger combing it into loose, soft waves when he brought her coffee and her shoes. He leaned against the counter watching her work out that she was going commando. She slipped her shoes on, gaining at least three inches, and gave him an appreciative look as she sipped her coffee. “You look nice, Mr. Queen.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, I had a good night.”

Her eyes looked suspiciously bright. “I did too. Thank you, Ollie.”

“Good,” he said softly. Her hair was still damp, and she wasn’t wearing any make-up. She looked fresh scrubbed and deceptively carefree. They weren’t the sort of people who had mornings like this, and the idea of having mornings like this was ridiculously appealing. 

He leaned forward. “You know I have to go out of town?” he was pretty sure that Chloe knew his schedule better than he did.

She nodded, evading his gaze. He wondered if she was feeling it too, and if she was, was she avoiding his eyes because it was too much, or because she liked it more than was comfortable? He was positive that Chloe was less ready for anything serious than he was when he suggested that they get together.

He hadn’t completely worked out how ready he was for something serious.

“Do you need me to take care of anything?”

Distracted, Oliver started with, “No,” and then, “I don’t know.” He shook off the questions that had no answers, smiling ruefully. “Probably. Something always comes up. It’s not like we don’t talk half a dozen times a day,” he pointed out, because that couldn’t change.

“True,” she nodded.

“What I was thinking was dinner. If you can give me a ride to the airport, and maybe we can get something to eat?” he said.

Her expression cleared as she nodded, “I can do that,” she followed him out of the bedroom. “What time?”

“I don’t know. Seven?” he located his phone on his charger and tucked that in his inside suit coat pocket. He popped his laptop out of its dock and slid it into his briefcase. “If you are leaving, walk out with me?” he suggested. 

She looked out to the balcony. “I—“

He winced, shaking his head. “Sorry. I already checked. I can’t spare you the trauma if they are hanging off a light post, or decorating a shrub in a planter, but I swear to God, when I say, ‘oh, look, Chloe—how do you think those pink lacy panties got there’—it will be because I’m acting like we couldn’t possibly know _anything_ about it.”

Her eyes got cartoon-character wide at the idea, before a merry peal of laughter erupted. 

He shook his head sadly. “I didn’t really even get to see them.”

“But you know that they were pink and lacy?”

“I saw your bra,” he pointed out as he grabbed her trench coat. “Your purse,” he nodded to the table on the other side of the coat tree. “Do you want to take your coffee? I was going to stop and get some.”

He held her coat for her while she juggled the coffee cup. “I’ll take the coffee. I spend too much time at my coffee shop for the barista not to de-code this look,” she said, buttoning one handed.

“Give me the cup,” he said, hitting the elevator call button. “You might want to flip the collar up on that—you’ve got a little,” he gestured to her neck, backing into the open elevator and holding it with his foot as she swung her purse over her arm. He grinned at her. “Admit it. I was right about the trench coat. It covers a vast multitude of sins on the morning after.”

He started to press the button for the lobby and then stopped. “I should drive you home,” he said suddenly. Jesus. He was slipping badly if he couldn’t remember something as basic as ‘see the girl home’. Chloe was definitely in the ‘see the girl home’ category. 

She snorted a laugh. “I _know!_ ” she mocked him. “Good thing I’m not your date, Ollie. You’d be crashing and burning on second date potential while I’m standing on a street corner. It’s fine. I’m going to walk.”

“Really?” he bit back a smirk at the attitude, and hit the button for the lobby. “Okay. That’s . . . kind of hot, actually.”

“Shut up!”

“So, I guess that means I don’t even get a kiss?”

She leaned in and planted one on him. “Black,” she said. “Black skirt means . . .”

“Ah . . . black panties,” he kissed her back. “Now you are just messing with me, aren’t you?”

“I’m sure that I don’t know what you are talking about,” she murmured while flirting with him with her eyes. 

Gorgeous, he thought, ducking his head to kiss the mark he had made on her neck, chuckling when she poked him in the ribs. 

“Lobby in three . . . two . . . one.”

They parted when the bell chimed. “I’m getting an early 90s rom-com vibe,” he muttered. “What is that?”

“My 90’s rom-com lead is a little more John Cusack,” Chloe told him as they left the elevator. 

“Grosse Point Blank,” Ollie put in. “Yeah, I can see that.” Coloring aside, he saw no reason why he couldn’t pull off John Cusack in the role of depressed hit man. In fact, that was a little on the nose.

The security guard/doorman at the lobby desk greeted both of them by name. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you Ms. Sullivan,” he added.

“Good Morning, Dave,” she said with a warm smile.

Oliver’s cell phone started ringing as soon as he left the building. He checked the caller ID. “I’ll talk to you later,” he told Chloe before he answered the call. 

It was Mia. “ _Where_ are you?” she asked.

“On my way to work,” he said, momentarily distracted as he watched Chloe head the opposite direction.

“Well . . . you are late. Your assistant is piss-y, and I quit my job,” Mia said.

“And, you aren’t projecting and displacing like mad,” he joked. “I’m having lunch in, so why don’t you come by around noon, and have lunch with me. What are you going to do until then?”

“I don’t know,” she sighed. “Stand in line at unemployment?”

“Right. Do you know where that is?” he asked.

“7th and Vine. Duh.”

“Pat yourself on the back for your wage slave savvy. For reasons that are pretty obvious, I don’t know about stuff like that, except in a second or third hand way. You are so smart. I’m proud of you,” he admitted, and then wondered if it was too much. Did he sound like a demented life coach? Or too Clark Kent?

“Oliver? Are you on drugs? You are in a good mood,” Mia sounded suspicious. “Why aren’t you mad at me for screwing up?”

“Because you didn’t clue me in on the screwing up part, and I’m sure that you had a really good reason for quitting that you’ll tell me about,” he pointed out, feeling magnanimous enough to ignore the crack about being on drugs. “I’m about to get in line to get coffee—I’m pretty sure that if you are a jerk who is on the phone while you order coffee, there is a special mark on your cup, and bad things happen.”

The barista three people ahead of him behind the counter peered over. “Generous tipping mitigates poor cell phone etiquette,” she called out.

“Okay,” Mia caught enough of that exchange. “I don’t care what you get for lunch, as long as there is pie at the end. I need _pie_ , Oliver. I really, really need pie, and maybe ice cream. For me. Not you. You can be all smugly whole grain and watch me eat it.”

“Right. It’s a pie and ice cream level crisis. I got it. Lunch at noon.” He tucked away his phone. Give me two of something tall,” he scanned the menu, “caramel macchiato and a medium roast coffee,” he pulled his wallet out and gave her a twenty, waving off the change. 

Five minutes later he delivered the caramel mocha to Julia at her desk. “Say: Oliver,” he ordered, “Go!”

“Oliver?”

“Easy! Stop calling me sir.”

“You brought me coffee?” she looked at him a little funny. “I have a boyfriend who is in law school at Met U.”

“Random, but good to know that you are working on that sharing thing. How am I doing on time?”

“You’ve got twenty minutes,” she said as she popped the lid, and sniffed. “Caramel? I like caramel.”

“Everyone does,” he confided. “But, yes, I’m an awesome boss.”

Julia gave him a grudging nod. “Ms. Mercer’s assistant looks like someone hit her with a cattle prod, so on the Mercer scale, you are a nine.”

“8.5 would have gotten you a better Christmas present,” he joked. “Okay. I want to look at our cash flow. I think the bond market may get a little tight by the end of the week. Mia is joining me for lunch, and she needs pie and ice cream.”

“Defcon Two,” Julia guessed. “Fifteen minutes,” she updated him on his time balance. “Your messages are going to your phone now, and Ms. Mercer wants you to stop by if you are going to the Daily Planet.”

He nodded. “I’ll call her now, and get that over with. I’ll be in my office. Tell my 10:30 to—“

“Barge in,” she nodded. “Yes, ss—“ she caught herself. “I’ll take care of that Mr. Queen. And, we’ll see about the first name basis after Christmas. Feel free to call me Ms. Collins.”

“Well played, Julia,” he called back, barely avoiding a mail cart in the hallway.

“Sorry!” the mail clerk moaned. 

“We’re good,” Oliver called back as he key carded into his office. His intercom buzzed. “Tess Mercer ringing on one,” Julia told him.

Oliver put it on intercom while he docked his laptop and logged in. 

“Mercer,” Tess answered.

“Did you see what is going on with our number three investment banking partner? Yeah? Cause I’m thinking: liquidity. We’ve got some big construction loans out there. Do we have any draws coming due?”

“Uh—yes,” she took a deep breath. “Let’s look at that before the end of the day?”

“That’s where my head is at.” 

“You are really back, aren’t you?” Tess said. “This is good. I’m glad, Oliver.”

“Thanks, Mercy. I’ll call you later this afternoon. I’m pretty booked up today, so please check with Julia Collins, and she’ll make sure that I get back to you.”

Tess, who was prone to strategically dramatic interruptions, acknowledged the request before hanging up.

“I am back,” he said, looking around his office. Ever since he bought a controlling interest in Luthor Corp he had felt like he was stranded behind enemy lines. Then the hits started rolling in. He’d been thinking that the Luthor Corp board needed an overhaul, but losing all of them to an explosion hadn’t been part of the plan. He went off the rails and took out Lex. His rekindled relationship with Tess went nowhere good, and somewhere along the line he forgot that he was good at this part of his life. 

His office door opened and he smiled as the team working on the recovery plan for the geothermal plant filed in. “Okay. Let’s get to work,” he said, moving to the sideboard to fill a pitcher of water as the team took their seats. “Start with the good news, and then we’ll work the problems.”

Three hours later, he managed to get a moment to call Chloe, and manfully resisted when he saw no email or texts from her. Instead, he read several emails about cash flow and responded with some questions of his own before reading a report before his two o’clock meeting. 

After his meeting he opened his email to find an email from Chloe.

From: cstorch@digitalwave.com

To: OJQ@QI.com 

Sent: Wednesday, February 2, 2010 2:12 PM

Subject: Five Reasons Why We Should Not Update Our Non-Existent Facebook Status

 

 

• Lois  
• Clark  
• My privacy  
• Your hobby

And last, but not least, **this contestant on America’sTop Models who lists you as her future sugar daddy.**

I won’t stand in the way of true love.

TTFN,

_Chloe_

He rolled his eyes as he clicked on the link, and up popped a window with Chloe’s smirking face. She pointed at him. “Already checking out other women,” she shook her head sadly. “I thought our love was good for at least another 24 hours before your eye started wandering—“

He leaned back in his chair. “Chloe,” he warned. “You lost a billion cute points, there.”

“Turns out that we’ve got some pop-up action with Canary in Montreal. I don’t think I can make it for dinner.”

Damn you, Dinah, Oliver thought, keeping a light smile on his face despite this set back. “That’s too bad. I was going to ask Mia to come with us. She quit her job and she’s a little . . . you know what? That’s a terrible idea. You’ve got enough uncooperative, stubborn, proud, ingrates to manage. I don’t know what I was thinking,” he said.

“So, do you want me to get in touch with her while you are out of town?” she asked. 

He chuckled. “I don’t think so. I like your nose exactly the way it is,” he said. “But, is it okay if I give her your number?”

She nodded. “Absolutely, Ollie. I can dust off my under qualified social worker cred, and—“

He just smiled, shaking his head. “And, you’ve already got a bunch of ideas,” he finished for her.

She smiled back. “One or two,” she downplayed it. “This day is really flying by, and, I—“ she looked at a loss for words for a moment. “You know what? This is as normal as I’ve felt in a long time.”

“Who’s your superhero, baby? That’s right. Me,” he answered. “If you get free for dinner, let me know, otherwise, I’ll probably check in sometime tomorrow.” His gaze flicked from the screen to his intercom, blinking red. “I’ve got—“

“Another call?” she guessed. “Signing off,” she sang out, terminating the connection.

He sat up and tapped the intercom. “Go, Julia,”

“Ms. Mercer is on her way to you,” she said as Tess pushed through his door.

“Got her. Thanks,” he added, cutting the connection and resolutely setting aside his one setback—minor setback, he reminded himself—for the day to work the biggest problem the corporate ship was steering into. 

“I can’t believe I didn’t see this coming,” Tess said on entry. 

Oliver waved that off. “We’ve been here before. More money out than in, and we’ve got some big projects. The banks are going to slow walk our construction draws, because we are way ahead of schedule on our biggest project,” he summarized. “The money market is tightening.”

Her lips tightened to match it. “So, we go abroad. To Dubai. China. Russia.”

He did a little back and forth with his head. “I’m thinking a little closer to home. Reduce a shift at the RAO Tower, and the Geo-thermal plant—“ she was already shaking her head. “Hear me out,” Oliver temporized, “I’ll delay my trip to Star City and head to Gotham tonight, and then to New York. I’ll shake the money tree, and we’ll still be way ahead of schedule.”

“Gotham? Bruce Wayne will not do business with Luther Corp,” Tess told him. “He and Lex had a thing, or a hostile non-thing.”

“Well, Bruce and I went to school together, too” Oliver made a face. “He doesn’t like me less than he doesn’t like about 70% of the world.”

Tess’s eyebrows rose. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“It’s worth the detour and I think he’s persuadable. I just have to kiss his ring, and endure the Zen master stare for a couple of hours,” Oliver said. 

“He’s . . .” Tess shook her head. “Insufferable,” she said.

Oliver tilted his head. “Come with me. You can throw on something sparkly and let him pinch your ass.”

Tess’ eyebrows shot up. Early in her career, she had broken an investor’s nose with a hair trigger elbow to nose move. 

Oliver shrugged. “When you’ve spent Saturday night in detention starching boys underwear together, the mystique takes a huge hit. I know what to say and how to say it, and its 50/50, but worth the detour,” he concluded. “So we’re good? You have to slow RAO down for a week? Maybe two?” She looked at him like he was telling her that she had to pull teeth. “You know that we need the time to finesse the liquidity, Tess.”

That reached her. “Fine,” she growled. “Get the money, Oliver. Promise me that you’ll personally guarantee it if we are still here at close of business on Monday.”

He looked at her like she was crazy. “Uh, no,” he shook his head. “That’s bullshit. I’ve already got a huge stake in LuthorCorp, and I’m not buying more stock or writing loans to the company. It’s a business, Tess. It’s not personal.”

“It is personal, Oliver. I went into this partnership looking for someone with the kind of resources that would make an unstoppable force. You are back on the job, and doing your part, but I’ve carried you, and I expect you to return the favor.”

He shook his head. “Not going to happen,” he retorted. “I’m going to remind you that I’m actually opposed to taking a huge gamble on an unproven technology, but the board approved it, and I’m doing my part to fix a problem that your partner created by ramping up so fast. We’re square.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Just get the money.”

“That’s the plan. Wow. Good talk,” he said sarcastically. “Do I need to remind you I warned you ten days ago that we were overextended?”

They glared at each other, neither willing to back down.

He saw her expression shift as soon as she realized that he wasn’t going to give on reducing the pace of construction on the tower. “I’ll take care of it,” she said, still bitter.

“Thank you,” he was equally curt. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got meetings to re-schedule,” he escorted her out of his office on the way to Julia’s across the hall. 

“Conference call,” he reeled off four names for Julia. “We are clearing my calendar for Star City, and starting over with Gotham and New York. Let the Star City office deal with cancelling and rescheduling, I need you building a new calendar and coordinating support for the next two days. When you’ve got everyone rounded up, send the call to my office, and bring your laptop,” he said.

Julia looked startled, but she nodded. “I’m on it,” she said as he headed down the hall to round up a couple of LuthorCorp PR people to sit in. He spotted Tess’s assistant coming out of the kitchen. “Go see if Julia needs your help,” he ordered while Tess nodded her agreement.

“This place is like a tomb,” he complained. 

Tess gave him a sideways look. 

“What?” he asked.

She shook her head. “You are in a good mood today,” she said. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you in your ‘c’mon people, let’s kick ass and take names’ mode.”

He smirked. “Yeah. Like I need their fucking names, Mercy.”

That surprised a chuckle out of her. “Go get ‘em, Tiger,” she mocked, but her eyes followed him with a hint of warmth that hadn’t been there in a while.

Three hours later he was shooting out of LuthorCorp. When he was heading to Star City, he had no need to pack. He had a penthouse in the city. Now that his plans changed, he needed to pack to avoid the need to shop. Julia was following in her car to continue to coordinate his trip. He told the guard at the desk to send her up on his elevator when she arrived, and he went up to start pulling things out of his closet for his trip. 

He heard the elevator arrive. “You can work from my desk,” he called out. 

“What am I working on?” Mia called out.

Oliver came down the hallway. “My assistant is on her way. She’s going to work at my desk. My plans have changed a little. I’m still going out of town. I’m packing,” he explained. 

“You want me to get lost?” Mia guessed. 

“Or stick around, and you can drive me to the airport and have dinner with me. I’m starving,” Oliver admitted. 

Her expression cleared. “Yeah, I can do that,” she nodded. “Go on, and pack.”

He pulled his garment bag and a suitcase out of the hall closet. “Keep me on time. I need to be on the road by 7:15,” he said.

Mia nodded. “Got it,” she unwound a colorful scarf and took off her jacket to hang up.

When Julia arrived, he heard the low murmur of their voices, and went back to throwing together toiletries. He laid out his clothes on the bed as he pulled them, which helped for making sure that he had everything before he started packing. 

“Ollie!” Mia called out. “Your cellphone is ringing. It’s your ex-girlfriend’s boyfriend.”

He walked out to the top of the hallway. “Go long,” he said.

Mia laughed, and threw him the phone. He caught it and answered. “Clark. What’s up?”

“Checking in,” Clark said. “Are you patrolling tonight?”

“Nope. I’m flying out tonight. Chloe has my schedule,” he said, which Clark would know if he was talking to Chloe. He shook his head. “I’ll be gone for a couple of days, back very briefly, and then gone again,” he said. 

“Is everything okay?” Clark asked.

“Yeah, it’s just business,” Oliver said without elaborating. “Let’s do something when I get back,” he added as he scanned the items spread out over the bed, trying to figure out what his brain was warning him was missing. 

Socks. He nodded to himself. “Anything up with you?”

“No,” Clark said, and then practically tripped over himself to rush into, “Valentine’s Day is coming up. Lois says that she doesn’t observe V-day, but I think if I don’t do something—“

“No,” Oliver interrupted. “Don’t second guess that one. A woman that calls Valentine’s day V-day is not testing you.”

He heard Clark sigh on the other end, and smiled. Poor guy. He really wanted the big sappy Valentine’s Day, which led to the next amusing thought: Clark was the woman in the Lois and Clark relationship.

Oliver kept that to himself. “Anything else? I’m a little busy, but I’ve always got time to be your Ask Aggie,” he said, referring to the popular advice column the Daily Planet ran that was handled by a revolving cast of interns lodged next to the mail room. Aggie was an enormous Himalayan rescue cat that roamed the Daily Planet, and was the eighth cat to bear the name since the column was created in the mid-eighties.

The interns were required to write from the perspective of the cat, and it was a weirdly popular, hugely competitive gig at the paper. Lois loved mocking the cat/ghost writers.

“Not even flowers? Candy? Just ignore it?” Clark sounded disappointed.

“Buck up, man. It’s Lois. Get her a six pack and a well done extra-large extra cheese pizza, and you’re golden.”

Clark laughed. “Before Lois I had no idea that there was such a thing is well done cheese. Okay. You’re right,” he conceded. “Call me when you get back.”

“Aren’t you number five or six on my speed dial?” Oliver retorted. “Hey, keep in touch with Chloe. She knows where everyone is, and if you don’t tell her, she’s going to figure it out anyway, and then it is just awkward.”

“What are you saying Oliver?”

“I said what I’m saying, Clark,” _Jerk._ Oliver shook his head. “Take care, man.”

“I heard that—“ Oliver hung up before Clark could finish telling him that he could hear his lips moving. 

“That guy,” he muttered. He didn’t want to fly in a suit, so he changed clothes and added workout clothes, a shirt, and an extra pair of jeans to his bag before he closed it.

He was pulling his baggage down the hallway when he heard Mia and Julia talking, and paused to eavesdrop. “Look! Wine glass, with lipstick. Then, Ollie doesn’t make coffee for himself, and there is two cups, no _lipstick_ —“

“Ergo . . .”

“Aw!” Mia mocked Julia’s ‘ergo’. “No lippy means it all got kissed _off_ ,” she said sweetly. “We should start a pool on Oliver’s mystery date,” she said.

“Hey!” Oliver protested. “What the hell, Mia?”

She spun around with a guiltless expression. “Tell me that it’s not your ex-girlfriend, because she’s just a heat wave and blast of humidity away from big southern hair. And you are friends with her current boyfriend. In girl-code, that’s . . .”

Mia looked over at Julia. “Yeah, I just got there, too,” Julia said. “No offense, but your friend is kind of a skanky jerk-face.”

“I prefer to think he’s socially challenged, or an alien unaccustomed to our strange earth ways,” Oliver told Julia while enjoying the inside joke. 

“I put your dishes in the dishwasher, took out the trash, and put your sheets in the dryer,” Mia enumerated. “And then I got an idea,” she mimed a thought bubble exploding out of her head. “I could clean houses for people who can’t pick up after themselves.”

“And feed pets, walk dogs, re-stock refrigerators, run the cars through the car wash,” Julia ticked off before Oliver could argue that he did pick up after himself. “It’s not a bad idea,” she spun around in Oliver’s desk chair. “She’d need to be bonded, but we could get some word of mouth going at work.”

Oliver looked from Julia to Mia, and shrugged when Julia spun back around. “You should make a flyer and give it to Oliver’s doorman,” she said.

Mia’s eyebrows rose when Julia threw her hands up. “Genius idea. No applause necessary. I’ll help you with the flyer. Wear something a little less illegal street racing, and we’ll borrow my roommate’s dog for a candid dog walking photo. Little bag of groceries, dog,” she pointed at Mia. “You should put your hair up in a ponytail. So, so cute!” She turned back to Oliver. “I just updated your calendar. Your plane is fueling. Wheels up at 8:30. I told them that you are starving and to expect you to arrive at the last minute.”

Mia gave him a questioning look and a head tilt in Julia’s direction. 

Oliver’s head dropped. “No, Mia. I’m not dating my _assistant_. That’s a rookie move.”

Julia grinned, looking over at Mia. “I have a boyfriend,” she added helpfully. “He’s a law student with an engineering degree at Met U. And he’s cute. Plays softball. Likes model trains a bit too much, but as nerdy hobbies go, that’s okay. At least it isn’t comic books or video games.”

“You are like my new best friend,” Mia marveled. “This morning I thought you were bitchy and on the rag.”

Oliver looked up at the ceiling, shaking his head. 

Julia nodded. “I bought cool but wholesome clothes for you on my first day, and surprise! That turned out so much better than I thought it would.”

Oliver dialed Chloe while they bonded over managing the weirdness associated with him. As if he was the one who was weird, or they managed anything. _Kids_!

“Ollie?”

“Hi,” he said. “Are you still tied up?”

“Just finishing. Do you need a ride to the airport?”

“I think I do,” he said, ready to let Mia and Julia carry on with their bonding. “And I’m starving. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes?”

He looked up to see Mia and Julia watching him. Mia, with transparent interest, and Julia with a sympathetic smile. He was being pretty obvious. “You know what? I don’t need you to take me to the airport, I just want to spend some time with you before I leave,” he said. “Is that okay?”

“I’ll order in,” Chloe said. 

“Great,” he said as Mia patted her heart and gave him her ‘aw’ face. 

Julia got his briefcase for him as he hung up, handing it to Mia. “Laptop and charger in the briefcase. There is a benefit at the Gotham City Observatory tonight. I’ve got a friend in the development office, and he’s going to text me if Wayne is there. He’ll get you in without any attention. He says suit and tie is fine. You are staying at the Grand Gotham, which is widely known to be a terrible booking. It’s under renovation and notorious for bedbugs. I don’t have friends that would let me stay there—“

Oliver started laughing. “That’s good.”

“If you do have friends that would let you stay there, text me with the 911 and I’ll get you a better place. When you get to New York, you’ll be at Morgans.”

Mia took the briefcase. “I can be helpful,” she said. “So, now that Jules and I are besties, we’re going to order pizza, and put together that flyer. You could have stayed,” she said as she hit the call button. “When you get back, I’ll have an order form, but just because it is _you_ , Ollie, I’ll throw out your moldy food and sour milk for free—this time.”

Oliver and Julia exchanged glances. 

“Don’t call me Jules,” she said.

“Got it,” he joined Mia on the elevator. 

She waited until the door closed, and then gave him an expectant look. “What am I supposed to think when you don’t want me to know about your girlfriend?”

He looked down at his shoes for a long moment. “You could think that it isn’t something that you and I are going to talk about,” he said mildly. “Because she and I haven’t decided what it is, and that means questions aren’t welcome and well wishes are premature.”

Mia’s eyes narrowed. “You like her. A lot.”

The odd thing was that he didn’t want Mia to think that he didn’t like ‘her’ a lot. He wasn’t sure why that was the case, but it might have more to do with Mia, and his brand new discomfort with being the kind of jackass that had meaningless sex with women he really didn’t want to bring home.

He was also reminded of Carter Hall, telling him that he was a jackass because he didn’t let people know what they meant to him. It applied here. He really hated that guy, and he wasn’t really crazy about the guy Carter implied that he was.

“You have people in your life, and sometimes you don’t pay enough attention to them. They are just there, and you can’t imagine what you’d do without them because it’s become unthinkable that they wouldn’t be there.”

Mia frowned. The elevator opened to the parking garage. “What does that mean?”

Oliver got his keys out. “Exactly,” he said as he unlocked the trunk. “I’ve been in love twice, and that would not have described either of those women.”

“Huh,” Mia shook her head. “Yeah, that’s something to think about. Try not to hurt yourself.” 

He put his suitcase in and laid his garment bag over it, filling the trunk of his Jaguar C-X75. Mia handed him his briefcase while giving the car a look that would have melted stone. 

“Do you need a moment alone?” Oliver deadpanned after he shut the trunk.

“Nooo,” Mia used her elbow to rub out a smudge on the lid. “She’s a sexy, classy hybrid little darling,” she said. “The cornering—“

Oliver nodded. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he sighed. “While you are getting acquainted with your new BFF, her boyfriend is probably going to end up being a patent lawyer, and I’d guess he’s aimed at Detroit, so future career path? Engineering, law school, own one of these before you are thirty.”

She snapped her fingers, pointing at him. “It’s that or a life of crime.” She waved, backing away to the elevator, miming ‘call me’, and something else Oliver wasn’t able to decipher as he got in and started the engine. 

He parked in the garage behind the Watchtower building in a space he rented for his own use, and headed up to see Chloe, feeling ridiculously happy about the prospect of seeing her and eating take out.

He felt better about feeling ridiculously happy when he came through the doors and she did a bouncy little thing behind her favorite work station, flashing a dazzling smile his way. 

Oh, thank you Jesus, it’s not just me, he thought. 

“The food just got here!” she exclaimed. “Canary, are we done? Arrow is here.”

Dinah’s voice came over the speakers. “Yeah, let’s call it a wrap and let me know what we’ve got later. Canary out.”

Watchtower’s computerized voice announced that Canary was offline.

She was wearing a cute little top in a print with cherries, a red cardigan and jeans, and a pretty, glossy red lipstick that went with the idea of cherries perfectly. He caught her around the waist. “This was a terrible idea,” he said. “Now I don’t want to get on a plane.”

She met his eyes after a moment of close attention to the open neck of his shirt. “Hi,” she said. 

“Hey, Sullivan,” he waited for her eyelashes to sweep down, before he followed with a slow kiss. 

“How long are you going to be gone?”

His hands framed her waist, feeling her lean into him as her arms went around his neck. How had he not seen how irresistible she was? He kissed her again, tasting the residue of sweet milky bitter coffee while he absorbed the whole body impression of her smaller frame. He smelled spring rolls, and his stomach growled. 

“Couch?” she said when their lips parted.

He grinned. Spring rolls and sex. He was living right. He shook his head. “Desk,” he countered, following the waistband of her jeans to the front to pop the button. “Trust me,” he said, backing her up to the desk, scanning visually over her shoulder for breakable objects. She was pretty neat about her things, fortunately. 

“Don’t throw my clothes around,” she warned, slipping out of her cardigan, and turning sideways while he pulled her shoes off to reach for a keyboard. 

“Right, like that was all me,” he retorted as he unbuttoned her jeans at the waist and slid the zipper down.

The monitors flickered and went to sleep mode. The system would receive messages and alerts, but it would require authentication from Chloe inside Watchtower to open a link from the outside. Oliver tugged her jeans down, taking her panties with them. 

Then it was just a matter of freeing himself from his pants and helping her remove his shirt. 

“You know how you were really opposed to the idea of having sex here because I work here and it could get awkward?”

“I’m an idiot. Why do you listen to me? I’ll have sex with you anywhere you want,” he said, pulling her toward him so he could untie her halter top.

Her head fell back. “Oh . . .” she nodded. “Yeah, I think that works for me too. Except, next time, we need to put the elevator on lock down.”

“Right,” he agreed, kissing her throat as she took matters in hand, guiding him to her. 

He should have known that he was pushing his luck. They had had sex three times in the last twenty-four hours. 

“Don’t freak out,” Chloe began.

“Okay . . .”

She reached over and snagged a picture frame, moving it away from the edge just as he realized that it was Jimmy and Chloe’s engagement picture. It had been on her desk for months, and he paid no attention to it. 

She looked at it for a long moment, before setting it down, facedown, on her blotter. “I’m okay,” she said, peering at him. “Still with me, Ollie? Are you okay?”

She was evil. Was he okay? She had her hand wrapped around his cock and she was rubbing him against everything he wanted to touch, and taste, and lose himself inside of. It wasn’t like he had been married to Jimmy. He barely started to warm up to the idea that Jimmy was someone he might want to know before he was killed. Oliver was totally prepared to start finding him annoying if he messed this up for him.

“Uh-huh,” he grunted. “If you keep that up, I guarantee that I’m not going to over think it,” he managed to say. 

She shifted around, changing the angle, working the head of his cock against her clit like he was her own personal massager. 

Her eyes got heavy lidded and her breasts heaved as she squirmed, trying to find a better balance on the desk.

He ran his hands over her legs, guiding her a little, but letting her take the lead, gritting his teeth when she guided him into her, and then blocked him with her grip on his shaft, then starting all over again at the top. Multicolored late afternoon sunlight from the stained glass windows painted her pale skin in a wash of pretty water-colored light.

“Let go,” he urged. “Come on, Chloe, just let go.”

Through the haze of lust, he saw a spark of mischief in the double meaning. “Ollie, I’m not as inhibited as you think.”

He hooked his arms under her knees and pulled her to the edge of the desk. “Yeah, I’m all caught up on your hidden sex kitten, cock tease side,” he said. “Let me in, Chloe.”

She arched her back, and he started to slip inside of her again, but her hand was still preventing him from going further than a few inches. She traded his support under her legs for locking her ankles behind him as he bent over her to get at her breasts, and her throat, and her mouth. 

“I really want this,” she moaned as he slid his hand under her neck.

“Let go,” he demanded, thrusting into the shallow depth that her hand left to him. “Come on, baby. You want all of it, inside you . . . deep . . . hard,” he was a little unnerved by how much he wanted to make her lose it completely. “You just need a good, hard, fuck, don’t you?”

“Ollie,” her grip relaxed and he had her hand free and his fingers laced through his faster than the thought fully formed. 

He pinned her hand down to the desk and fucked her, hard, hanging on by a thread as she drove him crazy with her little whimpering moans and her hard little fingernails scratching his skin. The legs of the desk barked as their bodies came together, again and again. “Next time, you’re going to be the one bent over,” he panted. “Right here, on this desk—“

She was tightening around him, her free arm around his neck. “I’m going to come,” she whimpered.

“Damn straight,” he gritted out. “Now,” he urged. 

The hard little convulsive roll of her hips did him in. He held on for a few more strokes while she clenched around him and then he was right there with her. 

 

“What we really need around here is another desk. For guests. Or for emergencies,” Oliver said, and he only sounded a little testosterone addled. 

Chloe’s nose scrunched up. “There’s something stuck to my back.”

Oliver checked. “Post it note,” he announced with manic cheer. He read the note, frowning. “It’s a bunch of numbers and dates,” he said.

Chloe snatched it out of his hand. “It’s . . .” she waved the note impatiently. “It’s . . .”

He just shook his head at her flailing. “It’s one of your top secret projects,” he guessed. “You’d tell me, but you’d have to kill me, or have me kidnapped and stuffed in a pine box—oh wait,” he pointed at her. “We’ve done that one.”

Her post coital glow was red-faced and sweaty, and it was sexy as hell. She frowned at him. “You are never going to let it go, are you?” she complained. 

“If I kidnapped you and stuffed you in a pine box, would you let it go?” he countered.

She made a face and tilted her head. “Been there, done that,” she admitted. “Wow. You really are bucking for sainthood with the Zen-like calm and forbearance,” she marveled as he handed her the cardigan that she had been wearing earlier. “Panties?” she asked hopefully.

He held up a plain white cotton pair. “Let me guess. Because white cotton and blue jeans are a classic.”

Her eyes sparkled with laughter. “Great minds, huh?”

She snatched her underwear out of his hand and shooed him off. “Go to the kitchen and get paper towels. This is going to be messy,” she predicted with dour humor. 

He brought the whole roll of paper towels back and the carton of spring rolls. “Ollie? Don’t eat all the spring rolls,” she warned as she tore off a couple of sheets like she was getting ready to mop up a major spill. 

He rolled his eyes. “It’s barely two tablespoons of—“ he caught her horrified look, and rolled his eyes, “What?”

“Don’t call it something gross.”

“Seminal fluid?”

She made a face. 

“Starts with ‘s’ and rhymes with junk?”

She shook her head. “Ew! No. I don’t like that one either.”

He took another bite out of a spring roll. “Interesting,” he said as she finished cleaning herself and the desk off before slipping back into her panties. “You don’t fuck like a prissy girl.” His eyes widened at her expression. “What?” he teased.

She waived her hand under her nose. “The smell of testosterone is getting a little thick.”

Chloe disposed of the paper towels and helped him collect the rest of their dinner from the kitchen counter. He pulled a beer out of the refrigerator for himself before asking her what she wanted to drink. 

They ate out of the containers at the couch. “Maybe I should get a table,” Chloe said, looking around at the space around them for a place to put it. 

“By the kitchen, in the corner,” Oliver said. “Get Bart on it,” he suggested. “He’s been dating this girl in Keystone with a booth at a flea market.”

Chloe looked surprised. “How do you know that?” 

Oliver shrugged. “We’ve been getting caught up. What’s going on between the two of you?” he asked.

Chloe shook her head. “I don’t know,” she hedged. She had an idea of what was wrong, but she wasn’t going to go into the details. “He’s been . . . distant,” she said. That had started around the time that her marriage started to fall apart. His blatant flirting had become a little strained. He had been at the funeral. She remembered that, but then he was gone, and it had taken her longer to figure out that he was avoiding her than it should have since it was more or less the universal reaction. 

“I guess, he’s disappointed with me,” she said, accepting it. She looked at him. “It could be bigger than retail therapy.”

“Or maybe it isn’t you at all,” he said.

She gave him a long look. 

“Okay,” he agreed. “But, a friend of mine,” he tilted his head towards her, “got me thinking that the way you get back to what you want to be is to just do it every day until one day . . .”

Chloe rolled her eyes. “Let me guess? Lois?”

“Yeah. She’d make a great coach. She does a good pep talk, and she isn’t shy about talking smack and occasionally following it up with a well-timed punch.”

It wasn’t the most obvious thing about Lois, but true, and Chloe found herself nodding. “I need to learn how to punch people without getting my ass handed to me.”

He smiled. “You should train with Mia.”

Her expression was a little iffy on that. He guessed that it was the training part.

“Fine. I’ll call Bart.”

“Did you taste this?” he fed her a piece of the shrimp in coconut breading. “I can’t believe how hungry I am.”

She was reaching for a spring roll and he wanted to snatch it back. 

“Aren’t you going to be late?”

“I’m going to Gotham. My calendar is all re-arranged. You should probably look at it again,” he said. “I have to go scare up some money,” he rolled his eyes. “It’s complicated, but I did get Tess to agree to cut a construction shift for the RAO Tower, so we’ve got a little more time.”

“Ollie—“

“I know—are you going to eat that?” he asked.

She bit into the spring roll. 

“That was the last one?”

He got another head tilt.

“It sounds crazy, but the board approved the project, so it’s a fiduciary responsibility. I have to deal with the money, even though I want to kill the project. Is that really the _last_ spring roll?”

Chloe laughed and got up on her knees on the couch to feed him the rest of it. Her jeans and top were still on the floor, so it was just Chloe in her panties and cardigan. He hugged her, rubbing her bare legs. “Best take out ever,” he said. “Did you try the spicy chicken?”

“Too hot,” she made a face. “Oliver?”

“I know. I’m going to have a few more bites, and then—“ he kissed the corner of her mouth, “yeah, I’ve got to go.”

“Do you want to take some of this with you? You’ve got a microwave on board don’t you?”

“I’m going to a cocktail party when I get to Gotham, so I’ll have little pigs in blankets and tiny corn to snack on.”

“Question?” she dragged one leg over his, sitting lightly on his thighs. 

“Yes,” he nodded. “It’s the answer to all questions that start with you half naked, on my lap.” He waved her on. “Hit me.”

“Do you think that you are going to want to do this again when you get back?” she asked. Before he could answer, she pressed her fingers against his lips. “Keeping in mind that I remain emotionally and romantically unavailable,” her nose wrinkled. “You can do better, Ollie.”

He pulled her fingers away from his mouth. “No TOS? Or product safety warning?” he teased, playing with her fingers. Stalling. He shook his head. “You are talking about more than a couple of days from now, Chloe,” he pointed out. 

“I’m living pretty day to day,” she said, avoiding his eyes.

Under the surface, she looked a little tired. When he came back, he thought the thing that was different about her was the wariness that made her look like she was always on the verge of pulling back. Since then, he caught hints of how exhausting and joyless her life had become. It used to be easier to hurt her feelings or disappoint her, and now, not so much. He thought she was just hiding it better at first, and then he realized that things that would have bothered her a year ago just slid off her new, scary coating of emotional Teflon. 

“I have no expectations other than that you will continue to be an important part of my life and work for the foreseeable future,” he drew her closer, turning to lay her on her back, across the seat of the couch. “I’ve seen you smile and heard you laugh more in the last twenty-four hours than I have in a year, and I kind of feel like I took out a 33.1 facility single-handed, so . . . I’m looking forward to a couple of days from now.”

Her eyes filled suddenly, and she looked away, bringing their joined fingers to her lips. He kissed her cheek and leered at her breasts until she got over her moment and elbowed him. “Since I actually have feelings that might get hurt, if you decide that you’ve had enough fun, you should lie and tell me that you are a lesbian. Pictures would help sell it,” he teased. “Get Canary or Zatana to help out.”

Chloe grabbed a throw pillow and started hitting him with it while laughing. “Go!” she shooed him. 

He managed to steal a kiss first before hoping up while Chloe started throwing pillows at him. “Going. Jesus. So violent,” he muttered. “I’ll probably get an email telling me that my limited access fun pass is revoked.”

Chloe snorted. “I almost want to steal that,” she admitted. “Don’t you dare drunk call me at two in the morning, Oliver. I’m sleeping in my bed in Smallville, and you’ll wake Lois up.”

He checked his watch. It was 8:15. He might actually make it to the airport on time-ish. Within ten minutes, which was pretty much on time when you were the guy paying for the jet fuel. 

He did a last minute check at the door to make sure that he had his phone, wallet, and everything was zipped and buttoned correctly. He looked around at the mess they made. “Chloe. This place looks like hell. Do something about it, okay?” he said with a smug grin as he walked out the door.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Link to banner: http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/bkwurm1/12629216/20212/20212_900.jpg

It took nearly an hour to de-clutter her couch and living room after she got home, and as luck would have it, as soon as Chloe got into her comfy pajamas and into the perfectly broken in corner of her couch with her tiny fireplace putting on a good show of pine-scented cozy comfort, her cell rang.

“Does no one care that I’ve never seen the final season of Battlestar Galactica?” she asked aloud.

Lois checked her reflection again in the mirror by the door before turning to Chloe to say, “No.”

Chloe frowned at that. 

Lois snagged her phone off the counter and glanced at the caller ID. That got Chloe moving. “Hey!” she protested when Lois hit ignore. 

“No,” her cousin said, keeping the phone in hand. “At least vegging out in front of the TV in geektastic-ness is understandable. You can’t even go out with us anymore, Chlo,” she complained.

“On a date?” Chloe held her hand out for her phone.

“It’s a work-date,” Lois said. “You should come.”

Chloe tilted her head to one side. “How is this a work date?” she asked.

Lois looked blank for a moment. She and Clark were attending a cocktail party to celebrate the opening of a new exhibit in the Metropolis Museum of Textiles. Not even if Tess Mercer was on the warpath would she saddle both of them with an assignment that boring and insignificant. Lois volunteered for the assignment because the catering was by a restaurant the Planet’s food critic raved about. She was bringing Smallville along because he was from the land of arts and crafts.

“Shut up,” she muttered. “Why can’t you come?”

“Why are you going?” Chloe asked as Clark knocked on their door.

She really wasn’t in the mood to talk—or not talk while pretending that she wasn’t aware that they were not talking—to Clark.

Lois called out that the door was open and went back to the bedroom to find a purse.

Chloe returned to her comfy corner. “Hi, Clark,” she said, keying the password on her phone to check her messages.

“Hey, Chloe—“he sounded as enthused about seeing her. “Where is—“

“Closet!” Lois yelled. She came back out with a dusty looking clutch, modeling it. “What do you think?”

Chloe looked up, nose wrinkling. “Ruched satin roses?” She de-camped again, sliding her feet in bunny slippers to go look for a better purse while Lois and Clark made kissy face over Lois straightening Clark’s tie.

Reaching under her bed, Chloe pulled a shallow plastic storage box out and found a black leather envelope purse, and kept looking until she unearthed a black satin rectangle with a gold tone frame and a wrist cord—right shape, but not interesting enough. In the back she came up with an ivory satin rectangle with wrist cord embroidered with a beaded Greek key design. 

She handed it to Lois as she passed the couple in the foyer, feeling annoyed at how tall they were. 

“Tell Chloe that she should come with us,” Lois ordered, examining the purse.

“No,” Chloe pre-empted the lame echo that was likely to follow. “I will see the final season of BSG,” she said. “Go.”

“It was kind of disappointing,” Clark volunteered.

Chloe looked like she was going to throw the remote at him. Lois’s eyes widened. “Okay,” she said. “We’re going,” she said.

Her phone rang again. This time, she recognized the ring tone and answered without looking at the phone. “Hey,” she said.

“Chloe! I got your message,” Lana said. “Are you okay?”

Even across an ocean, the warmth and concern in Lana’s voice was evident. 

“I’m fine,” Chloe assured her. 

“And Clark?”

Chloe took a deep breath. “Also, fine, Lana.”

Yesterday afternoon her HR contact called to tell her that the insurance check would be released by the end of the week and express mailed to her. Being relieved of that nagging worry left her feeling the not so mild pangs of guilt over appropriating funding from Isis and QI. She called Lana to tell her that she had pulled funds from the investment account and that she would put the money back within the week. 

“As soon as Jimmy’s life insurance pays out—“

“I know,” Lana interrupted. “You explained that, and of course, take what you need. I thought Oliver was back.”

“He is,” Chloe picked at the edge of the blanket she pulled over her lap. “There are some things that I need to do—precautions that I need to put in place, and the fewer people who know, the better,” she said. 

“Okay,” Lana said.

Chloe blinked. “That’s it?”

Lana chuckled. “That’s it,” she confirmed. “I left you with access to the Foundation for emergencies—and I’ve learned that if you think that you can’t tell me something, you probably have a good reason for it. I know how much Isis means to you, Chloe. You wouldn’t ask unless you had no other choice.”

Technically, she hadn’t asked, but Chloe was willing to go along with Lana's version.

“Thank you,” she said after a long moment. 

“How are you doing? Are you sleeping better?” Lana asked.

Two days after Clark told her that he was leaving to resume his training with Jor-El, Lana came to Metropolis. She stayed for two weeks, and she might have stayed longer if Clark hadn’t resumed his mission in the city. If it hadn’t been for Lana, Chloe didn’t know what she would have done.

“I am,” Chloe said. It was true. She had been feeling like a rubber band stretched too tight for weeks, and then she didn’t. She was still working at a furious pace, and sleep was not high on her priority list, but she was no longer reluctant to try for fear of triggering insomnia. 

“Have you put on any weight?” Lana asked, sounding empathetic, but firm.

Chloe scooted down on the couch, looking over at the fire. “Yes, mom,” she teased. “I got a Panini maker after we talked last time.” Lana had raved about a museum she had visited in Rome with a wonderful café across the street where they made simple and extraordinary sandwiches.

“I worry,” she admitted. “We motherless girls have to take care of each other.”

“True,” Chloe agreed. Not for the first time, she reflected on how lucky she was in the women in her life. Lois could be self-involved, but it was probably a good thing she was, because her cousin would risk life and limb for her, so the less she knew the better. Lana was a lot more low-key and quiet. She didn’t push, but she was present, even if she was on the other side of the world. 

“I want to hear about what you’ve been doing lately,” Chloe said.

“That’s boring,” Lana complained. “The program I’m involved in is amazing, and I’m learning a lot, but I want to get out there and _do_ something. I’ve been shadowing an organization that resources people rescued from human trafficking. It’s such a huge, huge problem, and I meet these amazing people who are working miracles, and it’s not enough.”

Ordinary evil, the bad things that bad people do for unfathomable bad reasons—Chloe closed her eyes for a moment, remembering Lex. The further she got from the last year of his life, the more she remembered who he was before he became so dangerous. 

“I’m not bored. I feel a little under-utilized, but I think that I’m supposed to be doing this now, because I’m as interested in what happens after things change as I am in being a force for change. There are unintended consequences for acts inspired by a desire to make things better. I want to learn how to anticipate that and be prepared for it.”

“I’m so proud of you,” Chloe said.

“You don’t know how much that means to me,” Lana told her.

Her phone chimed with another call waiting, and Chloe checked to see who was calling her. It was Dinah calling on her personal line. She sighed. “I’ve got a call coming in,” she said softly. 

“And you need to take it,” Lana’s voice conveyed gentle acceptance. “Take your call, and if you need anything, call me.”

“I will,” Chloe said. “Be safe. I love you.”

“I love you, too, Chloe.”

Sitting up, she picked up the second call before it rolled to voice mail. “Hey, Dinah. What can I do for you?”

Despite the fact that their introduction had been less than ideal, or maybe because of it, Chloe got on well with Dinah. It probably helped that she didn’t take Dinah’s occasionally strident conservatism personally. Dinah was as much shaped by her circumstances as the rest of them, growing up in a family with deep ties to law enforcement. Like Courtney, she was a second-generation vigilante. Chloe had been startled to discover a connection to the JSA through Dinah’s mother, who was the widow of one Gotham police officer and wife of another, and a Federal prosecutor.

Mother and daughter had trained with Ted Grant.

Dinah’s meta ability manifested when she was in college, and it shaped the way in which she joined the family business. She was, in Chloe’s experience with the meteor-infected, startlingly well adjusted. 

During the team’s breakdown after Doomsday, Dinah had changed jobs, moved to Seattle, and assembled her own team to hunt a serial arsonist. Dinah helped her plan the Roulette operation after Chloe explained her concerns about Oliver’s downward spiral.

“Nothing,” Dinah said. “I’m just checking in. I updated my calendar through March. I’m going to be in Metropolis in the third week of February. I wanted to make sure that you had time to do any tech upgrades that you think that I need, and I’d like to see what you’ve done with the new house.”

Chloe opened her laptop and waited for her login screen. While she was waiting, Dinah asked if Oliver reconnected with AC. 

“He did. He spent a couple of days in Miami.” Chloe logged in, brought up her calendar to send a task request to Victor for field equipment upgrades, and scheduled time to meet with Dinah while they made idle conversation about Dinah’s new talk radio gig. 

“Okay, you should be getting an appointment request from me,” Chloe told her. 

“Great. Is the Wednesday night dinner still on?” she asked. “Because, I read the book Jonn suggested, and . . . it was pretty good, actually.”

“I know!” Chloe had been surprised at that too. “I usually don’t like dystopian fiction.”

“Are zombies real?” Dinah asked. “And, did I just jinx us?”

“Yeah . . . if you did, we’ll know who to blame,” Chloe said cheerfully. 

“We’re the only ones that read it, aren’t we?” Dinah guessed.

Chloe chuckled. “I think Oliver started. I don’t know if he ever finished. Zombies would have sold it.”

There was a moment of silence followed by a wicked laugh from Dinah. “The Warmth of Other Suns,” she said. “It’s 800 pages, great book, no zombies. We talk up the zombie action and hint that the next book is about vampires.”

Chloe laughed with her. “Victor probably read it,” she allowed. 

“Vic is cool. He’ll go along with my evil plot,” Dinah chortled. 

Chloe gave the BSG Season 4 box a long, resigned look. “Tell me about your new job,” she invited. “Are you going to stick with the apartment that they found for you, or are you looking?”

“I like the job, but two or three hours on air—the prep is a killer. And it’s a totally different approach than writing a story or an editorial. You have to cut out a lot of stuff that print trains you to do automatically. I like the immediacy of it—a lot. It can be pretty intense.”

“I heard the show that you did on opportunity—I can’t remember what it was called—but, it was interesting. The researcher you had from the University of Seattle was really good.”

“Wow. You are picking me up on satellite? I can tell my Mom she’s not alone.”

Chloe laughed at that. 

“I love that part of it. There is always something new and surprising to learn about and the push-pull of debate—“ Chloe could hear the eye-roll. “I know that sometimes it is more shouting out talking points, and that can be aggravating.”

“I’m going to guess that you are too busy to go apartment hunting?”

“Oh, yeah,” Dinah sighed. “The floor plan in this place is crazy though. I feel like a rat in a maze, and don’t get me started on closet space. I thought I was going to use the bonus room as a home office. It’s my closet.”

They talked for another half an hour and when the call ended, Chloe looked at the remote for a moment, and then at her phone and computer. She dialed Oliver, even though it was an hour later on the east coast.

It went to voice mail, and she ended the call without leaving a message, resolutely turning on the television to watch the first episode of the final season. She had to call up the BSG Wiki to reboot her memory of the third season. 

After she called Lana and owned up to ‘borrowing’ from Isis, she considered telling Oliver. She was going to put the money back—but Oliver wasn’t Lana. He would have insisted on knowing why she needed access to a half a million dollars, and that was more difficult to explain without sounding as if she didn’t trust him. 

 

Oliver brought bat ears from Gotham. They were vinyl, attached to a vinyl covered plastic headband, and sold at the Gotham airport, much to Oliver’s amusement. 

“How sad is it that the first thing I thought was: licensing and merchandising,” Oliver said. “These things were going for twenty-bucks and—“ he frowned. “We don’t have anyone with a cute ear, or horns.”

“No, we don’t, but sometimes AC calls you Legolas behind your back,” she teased, cradling her favorite coffee mug.

Oliver slipped the headband on her. “Very cute,” he said. “I almost called you last night when I got in.” 

“You should have. I fell asleep on the couch.”

He sat on the corner of the desk he used when he was visiting. “That’s okay, then?” He sounded skeptical. “I call whenever I want to get together?”

Chloe tilted her head to one side, shrugging. “More than okay,” she said. “I would have come back in town.”

“Really?”

She smiled at the small grin that appeared on his face. 

“Because you missed me?” 

Chloe nodded. “Oh, yeah. I missed you like crazy,” she deadpanned. “And I like having sex with you.”

“Good to know,” he said, fiddling with the headband and her hair, before tilting her head to brush his lips over hers in a teasing prelude to a kiss. 

“Don’t you have to go to work?” she asked. 

He made a face. “I kind of own ‘work’, so I don’t think I’m going to get in trouble for being late.”

She gave him a pointed look, and he sighed. “Fine,” he huffed, stealing a breath-robbing kiss. 

“I have to go to Star City for a couple of days. Are you busy tonight?”

“I can stop by,” she extricated herself from his grasp, laughing at how he slowed her down by wrapping one arm around her waist for one last groping kiss. 

 

“How does it cost this much?” Chloe asked tensely, bent over her desk with her hands in her hair.

Victor sighed in her ear. “The refined meteor rock is the big ticket item,” he pointed out. “We went into production too fast, and we don’t have time to negotiate or—“

“Yeah,” Chloe closed her eyes, wincing. “It’s more money than I have budgeted.” It was more money than she had on hand, including the insurance money.

“I figured as much,” Victor waited a moment. “What do you want to do? We have a pretty good arsenal of weapons for close fighting.”

It wasn’t enough, and she knew it. She ran her finger down the line of figures, feeling her stomach clench around an excess of acid and coffee. “Place the order,” she said. “We’ll pay ten percent up front for working prototypes.”

Victor thought about that for a moment. “I’m not sure I can sell that,” he said slowly.

“It’s the cash on hand. I’ll get the rest, but it’s going to take a week or more.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll do what I can to get that.”

“What about reconditioning surplus weapons?” Chloe asked.

“Getting a hold of large amounts of weapons is a little tricky. I can't just walk into a surplus store and order a dozen grenade launchers and grenades,” Victor said. “But, yeah, that’s something to consider. I’m also looking at some non-conventional ideas. Stuff to disrupt communications and at the same time harden ours,” he explained. 

She chewed on her lip. That was going to add to the total she was racking up.

“Chloe, you have to tell me if I’m over thinking this,” he said.

One way or another, the future that Lois had visited could not be allowed to come to pass. “No. I’ll get the money,” she promised.

After she got off the phone, she picked up the picture of Jimmy she kept on her desk. He was smiling. She hadn’t always liked his optimism. She worried that Jimmy liked his life to be simple. He left the Watchtower, enough money to pay off the mortgage, and a life insurance policy that put six hundred thousand dollars in her hands for all of five minutes.

“I’ll fix this,” she promised. 

 

The weather had shifted from unseasonably warm to wet and cold with February. The Clocktower was drafty and cold. In the renovation after Canary trashed the place, Oliver had added a heated floor. He liked walking around barefooted, and the floor was almost painfully cold in the winter. When Chloe arrived after seven, he had changed into jeans and t-shirt under his favorite sweater to ward off the chill.

Apparently, he needed a fireplace as well. 

Oliver tried to talk Chloe out of it when she wanted to sit on the balcony in front of the fireplace. She was oddly insistent, moving the furniture around to move the couch closer. Even so, he had to get a blanket to wrap around them. 

He warmed up to the idea when she straddled his lap. Her hands were ice cold. So was her nose, pressed against his chest. 

He didn’t mind being up on the balcony in the wind. Not even a little. Resting his cheek against her hair, he stroked her back until their shared warmth and his hands unknotted some of the tension. It bothered him that she wasn’t sharing what so distressed her.

She warmed her hands under his sweater. 

“Have you given any thought to our merchandising options?” he asked, trying to tease a smile out of her.

“There’s always Clark’s crest. We can bleach sponge it into t-shirts,” she suggested.

“I like it,” Oliver murmured. “It could be an instant industry for the Kandorians.”

She huffed a laugh into his neck. “That might actually get Clark on board,” there was a faint note of bitterness there. 

Had Clark done something to upset her today? She was fine earlier when he stopped by.

“What kind of day did you have?” he asked. 

Her hands played with the hem of his t-shirt. For a moment, he thought she wasn’t going to answer. “There will always be things that I do that I don’t tell you about,” she said.

He decided that his initial instinct not to push her to share what was bothering her was probably correct. 

“Okay,” he said.

Her hands stilled on his abdomen. She raised her head, looking at him curiously.

“I’d claim that there is stuff I don’t tell you about, but you’d probably set up around the clock surveillance—“ he broke off with a chuckle as her eyebrow, the one he sometimes referred to as the eyebrow of doom, rose to new heights of ‘stop there’.

Her fingers went walking up his abdomen. It was very distracting, he decided. “C’mere,” he beckoned with a nod.

Her fingers splayed over his chest as she tilted her head, taking advantage of the superiority of her position to offer a barely there kiss. She pulled back. “Your lips are cold,” she whispered.

Her thumbs brushed his nipples, still cool, but not unpleasantly cold. 

“I’m used to it,” a gust of wind ruffled her curls. With the fire throwing rosy light against her pale skin and the gold of her hair, she looked beautiful. More present than she had when she arrived. The time it took her to drive home to Smallville probably helped her disengage. What he was getting now was probably what Chloe was like when she got in her car to go home.

She took his lower lip, biting it gently, running the tip of her tongue lightly over the surface while he cradled the back of her head in one hand. Whatever product she used to hold her hair didn’t have much resistance. It softened as soon as he dragged his fingers through her hair, and she kept kissing him, scooting up. 

Keeping the blanket around both of them was a lost cause, he decided.

“Bed?” she suggested when he got his hand under the generous dimensions of her loose blouse to cover a breast encased in lace.

“Bed,” he agreed. 

He turned the gas to the fireplace off while she hurried in out of the cold. 

She kicked her shoes off outside his bedroom door, looking over her shoulder at him with a smile. “You know that it isn’t even eight o’clock,” she said.

“Your point? I’d have been in bed with you at noon if I thought I stood a chance of talking you into it,” he said, helping her out of her blouse. 

She started working on her bra. From the way she was eying his sweater, he guessed that she wanted it off, but she stopped him, “Wait,” she said as she took her bra off. She wrapped her arms around his neck and rubbed against him like a cat. 

Oliver unfastened her jeans and his. 

“It’s so warm and soft that I’m afraid that it came with a disclaimer that no kittens were injured in the process of knitting your sweater,” she said, clearly enjoying the way he felt in it.

“Says the woman who thinks veal grew on Styrofoam,” he shot back, smirking at her, but giving in and folding her in his arms so that her back got some of the cashmere she was reveling in.

“Shush,” she ordered, following with a kiss. 

“Bed,” he reminded her when their lips parted. Her eyes opened and he was treated to one of her dazzling smiles. 

Her hand slipped inside his jeans and boxers, stroking him. “Don’t worry, Ollie. Its five feet away. We’ll get there,” she promised.

 

She managed to get dressed before Oliver woke up. Getting comfortable with regularly sleeping over wasn’t something she was ready for. 

He must have gotten up at some point after she fell asleep because the lights were dimmed, her phone was recharging next to his, and he had set the alarm and locked out the elevator. It responded to being called, but the door wouldn’t open to his floor unless he activated the over-ride on the panel by the elevator door.

She knew how to re-set everything, so she retrieved her phone. She was putting her coat on when Oliver came out of the hallway to the bedroom. He had pulled on his jeans, and was hugging himself, rubbing his arms. With bedhead, and a disgruntled, sleepy expression, he looked a little bit like a 6’4 toddler, minus the baby fat.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

Keeping her attention on her buttons, Chloe answered him, “Home,” she said. 

He rubbed his hand over his jaw, frowning. “What time is it?”

Chloe shrugged. “Midnight, I think.”

He walked to where she was standing, and she hit the elevator call button. 

“Are you driving all the way out to Smallville?”

He grabbed a jacket hanging by the door and slid on a pair of loafers that were next to a side table. Plainly, he was going to walk her to her car.

Chloe turned to enter the code to open the elevator and override the alarm. He rested his hands on her shoulders. When they were inside the elevator, he turned to kiss her, and Chloe put her hand up, cautioning, “Ollie.”

He tilted his head to the side, running the tip of his tongue over his teeth. “Do I get a rain check?” he asked. 

She didn’t bite back the smile, and the smile made him grin. He really was absurdly attractive. Her gaze shifted back to his mouth and she rethought aborting the kiss. It was closer to one in the morning. It wasn’t as if anyone was going to see them.

He met her half way. All that practice on the couch paid off. A brush of his lips had her tilting her head to a more complimentary angle as his hand cupped the back of her head. Her eyelids drifted shut. She was, beneath the thrum of excitement that was buzzing in her brain, very tired. Closing her eyes was like holding the moment to let it grow. She anchored herself to him with her arm around his neck, and he pulled her in and going home seemed like the stupidest idea ever even before their lips parted.

He gave her the smallest shake of his head. “Stay,” he said.

“I . . .” she thought about the drive to her apartment—too long, too late—and then the prospect of sleeping in the Watchtower, which she had done often enough, with nothing but a gun for company. Horrified, she felt tears welling up.

He saw it at the same time and his face twisted in concern. “Chloe,” he kissed her forehead. “It’s okay,” he soothed, tucking her in against his chest. 

She didn’t want to cry. She didn’t want to be this person who couldn’t keep it light until she made it to her car, and then to her bed, and then to sleep without the risk of coming apart. And it was easier not to come apart when she was alone. It was easier to remember why she hadn’t earned the dignity of the weight that made her feel like her heart was being squeezed into a stone. 

Less than an hour ago, a program she had written started worming its way through billions of lines of code. It was going to be in place through the night, scooping up passwords, finding system privileges she could use, and she was going to use it to siphon money from the combined behemoth of Queen Industries and Luthor Corp. 

Her only other option was failure and that wasn’t a workable plan. She lied to Jimmy all the time, and it felt right. Lying to Oliver felt awful, and the mystery of that distinction tormented her. 

“Are you okay with us . . . having this? No commitments. No strings. Just friends? It’s all I’ve got right now,” she admitted. “I’m . . . I needed this, but I need you in my life, without a lot of drama, even more.”

He held her gaze for a moment before his focus shifted into an introspective middle distance, and then his eyebrows lifted. “We work together,” he said. “I don’t want to compromise that.”

She smiled. “Me either.”

“I’m still walking you to your car,” he said, rocking on his feet as the elevator came to a halt.

It was drizzling when they reached the street, and he walked her to her car with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched forward. He shook his head. “I’ll get you a key card for my section of the garage,” he said.

“Wow. My car, parked next to yours? Is this something like me giving up a drawer for you?”

He looked over at her car. “Your car is a shameless hussy. She looks like she moonlights as a pizza delivery vehicle,” Oliver remarked. “She probably drips oil.”

For some reason, that made her start laughing. “You’d have to hang up sweaty body armor in my closet to come close.”

He pointed at her, nodding. “Good parallel,” he said, taking her key from her hand. “Really? You have to unlock the door with a key?” he groaned. 

“The remote got crushed when I was busy being mugged last year,” she said as he unlocked the door and returned the key to her. 

He squeezed her hand. “Hey? I’m flying to Star City tomorrow. Get this fixed,” he waited until she lifted her eyes to meet his. “Get it fixed, Chloe,” he repeated. “The faster you are in your car at night, the safer you are, right?”

She was tempted to roll her eyes, but refrained.

“Take me to the airport tomorrow, and keep my car while yours is being fixed,” he added. 

She laid her hand on his cheek, stretching to kiss the corner of his mouth. “Okay. We’ll talk tomorrow?”

“Mm-hm,” he tucked her hair behind her ear. “Drive safe,” he said, waiting until she was in the car and pulling away from the curb at a sedate roll before he walked back to his building. 

 

Oliver met her outside of the Watchtower the following afternoon. He was standing next to a Land Rover. 

“How very suburban Mom of you,” she remarked.

“When I first got here, it made sense. I wasn’t sure if there were paved roads outside the beltway.”

“Cute,” she gave him a little two fingered wave for the keys. “I’m driving you, right?”

He handed over the keys, opening the passenger door to get in. Coming around the driver’s side, Chloe saw that he had a garment bag and a small suitcase on the back seat. She opened the driver’s side door. 

“Hi,” he leaned in for a kiss. “Mmmm,” he fingered her smooth hair—she had slept in and hadn’t bothered to do much with it today—pushing it behind her ear. “You look beautiful,” he said.

She smiled, looking down without moving her head. She was wearing khaki trousers, penny loafers, and a white blouse with pintuck pleats over a pale blue cami, and her green leather jacket. She could have been mistaken for a suburban mom. 

“No make-up, and didn’t do my hair,” she pointed out.

He shook his head. “Fishing for compliments?”

“No,” she moved back behind the steering wheel while he took his phone out of his suit coat, scanning messages.

“Still gorgeous,” he said.

Chloe adjusted the mirrors and felt around for the seat controls. She needed to elevate the seat and adjust the back for her smaller frame. She gave herself a few extra minutes to get oriented to the dashboard and the controls attached to the steering column. 

“Seat belt,” she reminded him as she put the Land Rover in gear.

“Minute,” he mumbled, his large fingers working the tiny keyboard with surprising efficiency. 

He wrapped up his texting when they were on the interstate and headed to the airport. “What do you have on the board for tonight?” he asked.

“No ops,” she said. “Clark and Jonn are covering the metro area. I told Emil that you were going to be out of town,” she added. 

Emil was mostly on call for Oliver’s benefit since Jonn’s abilities had been restored. “You want to have dinner?” he asked. 

Her nose wrinkled. “Do you have time?”

“Yes,” he said.

When they reached the airport, she drove past the commercial airline ramp and over to the private jet gate, pulling out her driver’s license for the guard to sign her through. Oliver’s phone rang, and he checked the caller id, and then answered. “Just coming through the security gate,” he said, probably to a member of his flight crew. “Great. Fire it up. We’ll be there in five minutes or less.”

Chloe figured that meant dinner was not going to happen. She drove over to the Queen Industries’ hanger and parked in one of the reserved parking spaces.

“Okay, so dinner?” Oliver said, getting out of the SUV.

Chloe got out too, figuring that she would help with the bags. He handed her his laptop, and she fell into step beside him. The co-pilot met them at the foot of the stairs. “Good evening, Miss Sullivan,” he said. “I understand you’ll be flying with us tonight.” 

Confused, she looked at Ollie. 

“This plane is reserved for Tess for tomorrow afternoon, so I’m flying to a private airfield in Denver where there’s another QI jet that will take me to Star City, and the crew is flying back to Metropolis—so . . . dinner--” Oliver hand on her back was directing her to the stairs.

“Oliver,” she protested.

“Forty minutes, and you’re on the ground in Denver, ma’am. We’ll have you home by ten this evening,” the co-pilot told her with a warm smile. 

Oliver was stroking her spine, waiting for her to make up her mind. 

The co-pilot took Oliver’s bags from him, tactfully leaving them alone.

“I was tired yesterday,” she said, thinking that this looked an awful lot like Oliver trying to make her feel better. 

“Yeah,” he ran his palm over her shoulder. “Lately, whenever I see you, we seem to end up having sex. Which—not complaining,” he clarified, “but I miss just hanging out, killing time, keeping each other company—“

“Goofing off?”

“I thought about inviting you to play golf with me—“

She made a face, shaking her head.

Chloe turned to him, putting her arms around his neck. It was an overcast day, but there was just enough sun out to bring out the gold in his hair. “I’m still pretty tired,” she said.

“I know.”

He looked tired too. It wasn’t obvious, but there were little hints of it around his eyes. 

She wasn’t going to go home and go to sleep. If she went home, she’d be going home to be alone in the crowded, unquiet place her head was. 

She smiled suddenly. “You’re pretty smart, Mr. Queen,” she said, giving him a quick kiss before turning around to go up the stairs.

Her capitulation was so sudden and unexpected—Oliver had an argument and a full press charm offense ready to deploy. He got a major assist from the co-pilot that was unexpected, and apparently had tipped it in his favor. With a spring in his step, he followed her, hearing her laugh at something his co-pilot was saying as he stowed Oliver’s luggage. 

He frowned. There was helpful, and then there was flirting with his date. 

The co-pilot turned to him. “I was just telling Miss Sullivan that we don’t have a steward for this trip, sir.”

Oliver gave him a perplexed look of ‘seriously, man. Are you flirting with my date?’

“Yeah. I know where everything is,” he said, looking over at Chloe. 

She was about to sit in one of the deep leather armchairs. Before she could sit, his hands reached her, squeezing lightly, and pulling her back to guide her further into the plane where there was a padded leather couch attached to the bulkhead that easily seated two. 

The co-pilot closed and checked the hatches and murmured something about letting them get settled. 

“Here, why don’t you take off your jacket and I’ll hang it up,” he offered. “Do you want anything to drink?”

She nodded. “Sure. What are you having?”

He took her jacket and hung it up before going to the mini fridge. “Huh. We’ve got an obscene amount of Red Bull in here,” he said. “And bottled water. Miniature alcohol bottles,” he held up a tiny bottle of Stoli.

“Bottled water,” she said. “Those little bottles don’t have the charm they had back in the day.”

“Back in the day? Is that the olden days?” he asked, teasing her about her lack of years to call old.

“Olden days is what my Dad says instead of back in the day. I guess that you are on the cusp of being from the olden days, huh?”

He brought her a bottle of water. For himself he had a glass, a couple of the little bottles, and bottle of club soda. “I vaguely recall the olden days. It was more glamorous.”

“But less fair,” she pointed out. 

“True,” he paused. “That reminds me,” he pulled a small brown keycard sleeve out of his pants pocket. “This is for you. Gets you through the lobby, overrides the alarm and the elevator lock out, gets you into the garage and opens the overhead door to my section of the garage.”

“Oooh. It’s an all access pass.”

“Something like that. Are you getting your car taken care of?”

“Something like that,” she echoed, leaning back as the plane started to roll. 

The intercom chimed. “We’ve been directed to taxi to runway two. Please prepare for departure,” the captain said.

Chloe looked over at Oliver.

“You’re fine. Don’t run around the cabin,” he said. He took his phone out and put it on airplane mode. Chloe followed suit. 

Chloe asked where they were going for dinner.

His expression cleared. “Oh,” he nodded. “Yeah, there’s this—well, it’s a private air field, but it was an army airbase back in the forties, and mothballed. Investors bought it, and restored some of the original buildings, including the terminal. There is a gallery and a permanent exhibit of stuff that was stored there that belonged to the WASPs who were based out of there during the war to ferry planes around the country. There’s a restaurant. People go for dinner, to watch the planes coming and going. It’s kind of cool. The décor is a little rough around the edges, but the food is good.”

He tilted his head to one side. “I thought about asking Mia if she wanted to come along, but I didn’t want to get you on your undercover secret lover soapbox,” he teased. 

“And I wouldn’t have,” she claimed. “It’s not a soapbox. It’s more of an anti-static pad.”

She was looking at him. “We’re still on the same page about that, aren’t we?”

He considered lying. “Probably not,” he admitted. “I don’t see what the big deal is,” he shrugged.

“It isn’t a big deal, but it would complicate things.” 

“Sure. I get it. We don’t want to complicate things,” he placated her; resisting the temptation to tell her that no one was paying that much attention to them. 

“You don’t agree?”

“That it is uncomplicated? Hm,” he thought about it for a minute. “No. Does it complicate things if Mia knows?”

“Does she?” Chloe asked.

Oliver laughed. “I don’t know,” he shook his head. “She’s been poking around though, trying to figure it out. It’s kind of funny how it bugs her that I’m not ready to . . .”

“Girl talk?” Chloe suggested, a smile playing at the corners of her lips.

Oliver gave her a ‘go figure’ look. “Maybe?” he snorted a laugh. “Something like that.”

Her smile broke past the defensive line she was ready to take on their commitment to secrecy. “That is so cute,” she crooned. “How does that work exactly? You are sparring and Mia wants to talk about boys she likes and girls you like?”

“Yeah, I see your point,” he said with a small smile. “With Mia, specifically, my point is that I don’t want her to get the wrong idea.”

The engines roared to life and for a moment, they fell silent. It gave Chloe a chance to figure out where he was going with this. After they were in the air and the engine noise subsided, she picked up where they left off.

“You don’t want her to think that you are uncomfortable introducing her to other people in your life,” she said softly. “No . . . I understand, Ollie. And, yeah,” she gestured to indicate that she didn’t want that either. “I would never want her to think that.”

He gave her a sideways look. “Man, I’m so sensitive and thoughtful,” he marveled. “Emil, Julia, Clark, Tess, my crack team of domestic managers, and Jerry—or Josh—my sometimes-caddy, the guys up front, security at work and residence, my great aunt Edna and your cousin Lois have met Mia. But, yeah, now that you’ve pointed it out, I have to admit that I am very sensitive and thoughtful.”

The intercom chimed again. “This is a short flight. We’ll be on the ground in Denver in fifty-seven minutes. As you can see, we have clear skies. We expect this to be a nice, smooth ride. In a few minutes, we’ll be passing over Smallville. You’ll be able to see the town from the windows to your left, Miss Sullivan.”

Chloe got up to go over to a seat by the window to look down. She had a lot of practice looking at satellite and aerial images, so she looked for the I-70 for orientation. The biggest parking lot in town was at the high school on the western edge of town. 

Oliver sipped his drink, watching her. She looked more relaxed today. He stretched his legs. There was a five star restaurant in a gorgeous art deco gem of a dining room on the second floor of the terminal. Chloe wasn’t dressed for it, so he shelved his plan to introduce something that looked like a date with only a minor pang of regret. It probably would have blown up in his face. Telling her that he would be back in a moment, he moved into the rear compartment where his luggage was stowed and changed out of his suit and tie and into jeans and a sweater. 

There was a discreetly placed series of symbols in the framing above the opening to the back compartment and the phone light switched on. He called Julia. “Change of plans,” he announced when she answered.

“Okay,” she said. “What do you need?”

“Call the restaurant in Denver and cancel my reservation. We’re going casual.”

“Got it—you are staying on the property, though.”

“Yeah . . . there is a canteen in the first floor.”

“Leave it to me,” she said firmly. “I’ve got this.”

Returning to the cabin, he found Chloe still looking out the window. “You missed it,” she told him.

“It’s not the same if you can’t see the sign from the highway.”

She returned to the couch. “You are going to Star City?”

He nodded. “I pushed back some meetings to go deal with our cash flow problem with the RAO Towers,” he made a face at that. “It was mostly window dressing for Tess, but the bank unclenched, so she’ll be pushing to get that done. I’m circling back.”

“What does that look like?” she asked. Seeing his uncomprehending look, she elaborated. “You’ll get in sometime tonight, and where do you go?”

His expression cleared. “Ah . . . well, I have a place in the city,” he gave her a skeptical look. “I’m a little hurt. You haven’t run surveillance on all of my residential property?”

She picked at the label on her water bottle. 

He shook his head. “I’m not sure what you want to know. It’s a couple of twelve-hour days of meetings, some of which are a little boring. If Victor is in town, we’ll hang out, and Friday night there’s a ribbon cutting, cocktail party thing for new rehearsal facility for the ballet. I’m following that up on Saturday with a brunch meeting of the Foundation—my parents left some money to be managed in a foundation with the mission of providing funding to local arts and cultural organizations. The ballet rehearsal hall is a project the Foundation funded.”

She was looking down at the water bottle like it was the most interesting thing she had ever seen.

“I don’t spy on you,” she said defensively. “I keep track of where you are and what you are doing as it is reported in the news, and—“

“Whoa,” he interrupted her. “I’m teasing you. Mostly,” he allowed. “You were getting a little scary there for a while,” he waited for her to lift her gaze to him.

Her lips pursed. 

“And if you were wondering, in a very indirect way, as far as I’m concerned, we are exclusive. I’m not going to be out trolling the club scene because going a full week without sex is going to be something new and unbearable for me.”

“A week?” she repeated, eyes widening. 

“More or less,” he said. “If you find it unbearable, I expect you to get on a plane and show up insisting that I do something about that.”

She laughed softly, scooting closer. “I think I’ll survive,” she said.

He squinted at her. “Give me a second,” he said, resting his arm across the back of the couch to make room for her to fit herself under his arm. “I have an ocean view and a pool,” he shrugged. “In case that tips the balance for you.”

 

Chloe took in the airfield’s canteen. It was a long room of plaster walls over brick. Columns of windows made of glass that looked warped with age went up at least twenty feet. There were posters with safety warnings between the windows. Several large, and clearly out of service pieces of machinery were pushed back to the walls.

The room was otherwise furnished with a motley collection of old furniture, picnic tables, and card tables with folding chairs. It was a good thing that she had her jacket, because it was cold. A picnic table opened up near a heat lamp and Oliver directed her to it. 

“Get the table,” he urged. “I’m going to get food.”

She found a napkin dispenser and took care of the cleanup. Sitting at the table, she couldn’t really see the airfield, so she sat on the table, with the added benefit of being closer to the heat lamp.

From where she was positioned, she saw mountains on the horizon with fading sunlight painted on snowcaps. Small planes rose into the cloudless blue sky, making a slow circle back to land.

When Oliver joined her, he handed her a large cup of coffee. The hit of the aroma took her to a happy place right before her taste buds reveled in the flavor. 

“Good coffee,” she murmured.

He sat beside her. 

“What is this?” she asked, gesturing to the activity on the field.

“It looks like touch and go,” he said. “Private airfields are used by charter services and aviation schools. Student pilots practice landing and taking off. Pilots practice basic communication and etiquette, communicating with a tower, if there is one, and with each other. Then the skills associated with landing and taking off. It also provides practice for preparing to take off while landing, which doesn’t happen often, but if you have to reject a landing for safety reasons, it is pretty crucial.”

Their dinner arrived on a tray that reminded Chloe of her year at MetU in the dorms. The food was in wax paper lined paper baskets. There were onion rings as big as bangle bracelets, small burgers dressed with a swoon worthy tomato jam, meaty fries sprinkled with sea salt Parmesan and pepper, and the best corndog Chloe had ever had in her mouth.

“If there is cotton candy or elephant ears, I’m going to think that you have been talking to Clark,” she said.

“Nope,” Oliver shook his head. “Fair food?”

“It’s my secret kink,” she confessed. “Fallen leaves, apples, roasted corn, Mrs. Kent’s roasted pumpkin seeds, and fair food.”

“You’ve got a little—“

“Mustard?” 

“Or drool.”

She giggled. “Both,” she swiped at the corner of her mouth with her pinky and licked it clean.

“Dainty.”

She waved with her pinky, “That’s me.”

He brushed the parm off a French fry and offered it to her. 

She shook her head. “It’s ruined,” she waited until it was in his mouth. “It still smells like feet,” she said with a smirk.

He washed it down with beer, toasting her. 

“Do you fly?”

Oliver shook his head. “I know how to, but its long periods of not doing anything. My Dad,” he nodded. “He loved flying. He used to bring me to an airfield near our home. There was a barber shop,” he gave her a go-figure shrug, “and we would get our hair cut, and,” he fingered his jaw, “I’d get a pretend shave. It was all very manly men stuff. After that, we’d get a soda or a snow cone, and hang out watching the planes and talking.”

Chloe looked over at him. She’d seen one or two pictures of him with his parents. 

“I wanted to go to the Mall,” he admitted. “There was an arcade,” he shrugged, rolling the bottle of beer back and forth between his hands. His father had traveled a lot on business, and the time that they spent together was a memory that he appreciated a lot more than he had enjoyed at the time. He closed his eyes. When they got home, his mother always checked the closeness of his shave, holding his face in her hands. 

Chloe slipped her hand inside his arm in what had to be the most timely and unobtrusive hug he had ever experienced. She rested her head against his upper arm. “My mom used to take me to work with her on Saturday morning,” she said. “She worked for the city in the Health department. And, uh,” she leaned in to share a secret, “we distributed condoms to clubs on Saturday.”

Surprised, he looked over at her. “You made that up,” he accused. 

“No, I didn’t!” she laughed. “I mean, I was a kid. I had no idea. I thought they were giant chocolates,” she shook her head at her naiveté while he grasped the visual of the gold coin packaging. “Then, we would go to the matinee at a second run theater or IMAX and meet my Dad for dinner.”

For a moment, they both sat with the quiet of their shared memories, watching a small plane glide to the runway, then power up to lift off again, banking at the end of the runway to complete the loop. He bumped her shoulder. "Want to go check out the exhibit?"

She shrugged. "What else is there to do?"

He turned his head and she met him half way in a kiss that was so overpowered by the chorizo infused corndog she had just scarfed and his parm French fries that they both backed off, laughing. 

“That’s so . . .”

“I know!”

The canteen sold birch beer and Oliver claimed that it was as good as mouthwash. 

They ended up in the back of the hanger testing out his theory until it was time for the refueled jet to return to Kansas.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Link to banner: http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/bkwurm1/12629216/20316/20316_900.jpg

The roses on her desk were long stemmed, blood red, and swathed in green net, emerging from a cut crystal vase that was probably, from the look of it, Waterford. They were the most lavish, extravagantly romantic bouquet Chloe had ever received on Valentine’s Day or any other occasion. If she had still been Chloe Sullivan, Daily Planet reporter and basement dweller, there was a time that she would have been more than willing to read into the gesture. She would have been happy to embrace every implied ounce of excess. The card enclosed had her name on it in Oliver’s distinctive scrawl. She took it gingerly, feeling the heavy paper, and pondering the significance of it with an _alarming_ lack of detachment.

She spent the weekend with Oliver, after he had returned from Star City. They had not talked about what it signified, but they had stopped joking about it being a one-off. On Saturday after her laundry was done, and he was restless from being indoors on a sunny day, they had taken his SUV out into the country between Metropolis and Smallville. She told him about how she hated Smallville and corn when she moved there and he told her about eating bugs until he learned by trial and error, which plants were edible, and how to fish and hunt efficiently when he was marooned. 

They picked up produce at a farmer’s market and made a feast of omelets with crumbled bacon, peppers, tomatoes, and roasted gold Yukon potatoes before burning off the starchy calories and her wariness with more sex. 

That was days ago. She woke up this morning feeling something that she had not felt in a very long time. Before she got out of bed, her phone was ringing and she was surprised to see that it was Oliver, calling from California. Just imagining what his voice would sound like at eight in the morning was enough to get her keyed up.

She took the call, striving to sound like she wasn’t in bed even as her free hand was creeping down, slipping under the waistband of her pajamas and inside her panties, quivering at the heat and sensitivity she found there as her cooler fingers tentatively rubbed her clitoris while his voice teased her brain with a host of new associations. 

It didn’t take him long to catch on. “Where are you?” he asked.

“Home,” she said.

There was a slight pause. “Yeah? Did I wake you up?”

“No, I’m awake.”

“But, you are in bed,” he guessed.

“Yeah. Where are you? It must be earlier there.”

“I got up early to work out, and I’m still on Metropolis time.” 

She bit her lip, imagining him in workout clothes—probably shirtless—and sweaty. He had pulled her out of bed Sunday morning after his workout. You’d think he would have been tired, but he was one of those people who got a big charge out of exercise, and he had worked off his excess energy in the shower. 

Sex in a shower was incredible. Just thinking about it was making her ache. There wasn’t even any slightly off-putting mildew or soap scum on the tile that her back had been pressed up against while he supported her with . . . really good body mechanics. She flushed at the memory of hot, slick skin, and his body, the erotic feeling of water rolling off her skin, all of the desperate muffled sounds that came from them, distorted and amplified by the tile, and the heart stopping feeling of recognizing the oncoming rush of her climax and wanting to fight it because she didn’t want to stop. 

She pressed her fingers against her clit, feeling a flutter of muscles deep inside her quivering and a fresh rush of her own wetness heating her. 

“What are you doing right now?” he asked. 

She reacted like she had been caught doing something. “Why? What do you think I’m doing?”

“I think that you are lying in bed, talking to me. I’m hoping that you are doing a bit more than just talking,” he said. 

She considered bluffing. “More, like what?”

“Are you naked?” he asked.

“Uh-uh. I’m in my pajamas,” she said.

“Yeah?” he sounded amused. “But you’re touching yourself, aren’t you?”

He sounded so sure of that. “Maybe,” she breathed. 

There was a pregnant pause before he groaned. “Yeah . . . I might need some more treadmill time and a cold shower,” he said. “Make sure that you’d do everything I would do and take notes. Or pictures, with detailed notes.”

She burst out laughing. 

Just thinking about it was making her smile in a way that made her heart sting. She made herself open the card, even though she wanted to save it a little longer. It was just a card with a message banal enough to be dictated by his assistant to the florist, she told herself. She had seen enough of his email traffic to know how Oliver operated. 

What emerged from the envelope was a plain note card with Oliver’s crest embossed in the paper. She ran her fingers over it lightly before giving herself a mental shake over fondling a card. 

Okay . . . so he didn’t dictate this to an assistant to be relayed to a florist, she nodded. Yeah, that made sense. He was smart enough to minimize connections between himself and Watchtower’s address. It was just good . . . tradecraft, since they were engaged in a super-secret crime fighting club, and were sort of like spies. Nothing out of the ordinary there, Chloe, she told herself.

She flipped it open and found a hand drawn heart with an arrow through it. Beside it he wrote:

_Best shot in the dark ever._

_Happy Valentine’s Day._

_Oliver_

 

She knew his handwriting. His propensity for doodling, especially during meetings, and promptly wished that she hadn’t looked and didn’t know. _God._ “It doesn’t mean anything,” she told herself, placing the card on her desk. She started to go back to work, and then picked it up to read it again. 

She really, really hated it that there was a version of Chloe Sullivan, buried deep down inside, that was doing a spastic happy dance while an older, wiser version of herself fumed at her spaztastic younger and less jaded self. It’s a _gesture_. It’s just a reflex. Oliver really couldn’t help himself. He was naturally charming. 

This time she slipped the card under her blotter. 

They were going to have to have a talk. Again. A better talk. Possibly with the visual aids he was so fond of. 

She made herself another cup of coffee and resolutely went to work, checking all of her alerts, then her email. She was immediately pinged with a text Oliver sent with a link. She followed the link to a website for a defense contractor about a Luthor Corp contract. She put it on her list of things to monitor. 

She took a picture of the flowers and texted a tongue in cheek ‘Naked and aching in my empty bed. Chloe.’

Because that wasn’t going to ensure a call back.

Her phone rang less than thirty seconds later. 

“Hey, Ollie,” she greeted him.

“Chloe,” he sounded like he was smiling. “You sent me a picture of flowers. That’s cute.”

“You sent me flowers,” she pointed out. “I had the same thought. Cute.”

“National holiday,” he pointed out. 

“Hmm,” she shook her head. “That’s okay. I got you something too.”

“You did?”

“Check your calendar,” she teased. 

“Huh,” he sounded intrigued now. “Is this what I think it is?”

“Surprise! It’s a weekend getaway,” she said.

“It is?” he sounded a little underwhelmed. “We might have a conflict,” he said.

“No we don’t. I checked your calendar before I made the reservation.”

“Yeah—“ he sighed. “So, the beautiful _Ozarks_ , huh? Because I’m on board with the weekend away, but I might have had something more beautiful in mind,” he hinted.

“I’m going to the MacDougal Inn, and you are invited to join me,” she said sweetly. “Unless you have plans with other adorable blondes that want to get you naked.”

“No. It’s an awesome Valentine’s day present,” he deadpanned. “Only crazy people take off in the doldrums of February to enjoy white sand beaches and sun. Consider it a date.”

“It’s not a date,” she said automatically, and then scowled at being walked into that verbal miscue. 

“Oh, it’s not a _date_?” he mocked. “We’re going out of town together to unwind and have lots of—uh, Chloe? Did you look at this place? The bedspreads are plaid.”

“Plaid. Batik. Tomayto, Tomahto,” she fired back. “You took me to Denver and fed me corndogs and rootbeer.”

“That’s what you got out of that? It was birch beer and I think the whole terminal witnessed your foodgasm,” he scoffed. 

She made a face at the memory. Yeah. She might have blown her cover on her addiction to junk food on that one, but cornmeal and chorizo infused fried food on a stick—her mouth was watering. 

“Okay . . . fine. You pwned me on the pre-emptive strike with the weekend break plans. Have it your way. Everyone chooses the B&B in the Ozarks over the bungalow in the Seychelles with the private beach.”

“Oliver,” Chloe resorted to her starchiest tone. Her lack of passport suggested that he was teasing, but still . . .

“Last word on it—at least I’m not going to have to compete with the ocean view, because _let’s go look at some pine trees_ doesn’t seem to be anything that would ever occur to you.”

“I’m going to go do some actual work,” Chloe said.

“Yeah, I was meaning to talk to you about your goofing off. Next time? Make the picture match the caption.”

 

The next day Oliver got a 911 from Emil about Watchtower being down. He excused himself, called Emil and was told that Chloe had taken off and buried the servers behind so many firewalls that Emil couldn’t get through them. He looked at his calendar and told his assistant to cancel everything and get him in the air as soon as possible. 

While he was on final approach to Metropolis, an explosion ripped through the solar towers that were supposed to open the following morning. They were still on fire, though there was no loss of life at the work site. 

It was a little after midnight in Metropolis when he came through the doors into Watchtower to find Chloe and Emil eating take out and looking a lot more cozy than he had any right to be uncomfortable with. Not that he was uncomfortable exactly. He was aggravated. Chloe looked like she had been in a fight. She had one hand wrapped in tape and gauze, a fat lip, and the beginnings of a black eye and an abrasion on her forehead. 

He led with, “What the _hell_?”

Emil met his gaze and shrugged. “I don’t know. I made a beer bong out of stuff I found lying around and got stoned. I think I’m still stoned,” he admitted, looking over at Chloe for confirmation.

She snickered, nodding. “Then you ordered a lot of food,” she told him. “Are you hungry, Oliver?” 

He ignored the question. “And you? Your pal over there with the munchies,” he gave Emil an annoyed glare, “calls and tells me that you are nowhere to be found and Watchtower’s off-line. What’s that about, Chloe?”

Chloe looked at Emil who threw his hands up like he wasn’t touching that one.

“Were you mugged, kidnapped, or beaten?” Oliver asked. Given the way she looked, all of the above were possible.

“Yeah, the last one, but I started it, so—“ Chloe shook her head. “It doesn’t really count. I’ll get a plate for you,” she hopped up and went to the kitchenette for a plate and utensils. 

Oliver started to follow her. “What happened?”

“Long story,” she said. “Sorry . . . we’ve been working on the servers, and my phone is dead. I tried to call you, but your assistant said that you were called away on an emergency.”

“That was my bad,” Emil claimed. “Totally slipped my mind. Sorry, dude.”

Oliver looked from Emil to Chloe, then back to Emil when the doctor groaned, holding his head. “Oh my God, is this what stupid feels like?” he asked.

“Enjoy it,” Chloe advised. “It was a thing . . . with meteor rock and a surfeit of literalness run amok. Clark gained the power of suggestion. As in, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode—“

“The one where Willow does the spell for her will to be done!” Emil pointed to her. “Totally, that one.”

“No monsters, though,” Chloe put in. “Lois did start planning a wedding, so close to the same.”

Emil made a face, “She was going to marry Clark, and I think Lois and Clark are more season two Buffy and Angel than season four Buffy and Spike.” 

Chloe looked impressed with the observation. “I actually know exactly what you mean.”

“You usually do. More than most people. It’s one of the things that I really like about you,” Emil told her.

Chloe gave Emil the ‘so cute’ smile she normally had warming for Bart. She started looking through the cartons, searching for the rice. “We ordered from the place on Market that you like, Ollie. There are spring rolls,” she told him.

Emil clutched the spring rolls to his chest and she pointed at him sternly. “Share,” she ordered.

Emil gave him a disgruntled look, but he relinquished the spring rolls. 

“The General Tso’s chicken is practically nuclear,” Chloe previewed.

Oliver was picking out a spring roll, he just nodded. “Yeah, that’s mine then,” he said. “I need a beer,” he went to the kitchenette to retrieve one from the refrigerator.

Recalling that Chloe insisted on re-stocking, Emil watched Oliver with his head titled and then his gaze shifted to Chloe, fixing Oliver’s plate. When Oliver returned, he had a beer by the neck. He snagged a shrimp off Chloe’s plate and popped it in his mouth. “Shrimp in lobster sauce, huh?”

“It’s growing on me,” Chloe murmured. 

He reached out to rub her back, and Emil was relieved to find that his filter was coming back. Otherwise, he would have blurted out something inappropriate about the relationship that they were probably keeping under wraps.

He sat back on the couch, groaning. So much for his very short-lived infatuation with Chloe Sullivan. While he had wasted time trying to figure out if she was on the verge of going over to the dark side, Oliver had stolen a march on him. Given that she was a widow and possibly half in love with Clark, Emil thought he had plenty of time, and no competition beyond Bart, to work out how her occasionally troubling ethics and lack of trust would mesh with his hyper-rationalism and myopia, and then possibly, explore something more.

Oliver sat on the couch near him, giving him a strange, wary look.

“You aren’t going to be sick, are you?”

“What?” Emil was indignant. “No.”

Oliver shrugged. “Catch me up,” he invited, his attention fixed on Chloe. 

When did this happen? Emil wondered. And, was it serious? It might just be a fling. The first relationship after the end of a serious relationship probably had a high failure rate—he made a mental note to see if there was a study on that. Objectively, he couldn’t really compete with Oliver, except that he was smarter and had accomplished a lot more on his own without a vast personal fortune or the body of an underwear model. 

Chloe was quirky, and the fact that he and Oliver were so different, meant that he might still have a shot. On the other hand, he worked for Oliver and they played golf together, affording him a semblance of an enviable social life from the point of view of some of his peers who no longer attempted to set him up on blind dates. 

“Let’s see . . . Valentine’s Day. Lois and Clark are out and they run into a street vendor selling candy and flowers. Lois wanted the candy and was dusted with ‘fairy’ dust made from rocks quarried in Smallville. Clark inhaled some of it, and suddenly anything he said that he wanted someone to do, became that person’s compulsion,” Chloe summarized.

Oliver nodded. “So, how does Emil end up,” he nodded his head in Emil’s direction.

“He told me to relax,” Emil put in. “And, I _did_.”

Chloe’s smile made an appearance, brightening her otherwise battered face. “Emil is nothing if not an overachiever. Which turned out to be the extreme makeover moment that Clark needed to make the connection between expressing what he wanted and getting it,” Chloe picked up on that earlier. “But, before that, he told Lois that he wanted a more traditional relationship, so Lois quit her job, took up residence at the Kent farm, did a whole Donna Reed make-over, made inedible roast, and started planning a wedding.”

Oliver laughed. “I miss all the good stuff. Are there pictures?”

“Chloe wouldn’t know because Clark told her to ignore everything and focus on watching his back, so,” Emil gestured to Watchtower, “she locked down Watchtower and went head-to-head with Tess Mercer.”

Oliver reached over to hold Chloe’s chin, checking out her puffy lip. “Huh. Got your ass handed to you?” he judged, sounding smug about it, probably because she had been ignoring his suggestion to get some hand-to-hand training.

“Yeah,” Emil said. “I thought I was going to have to send her to MetGen for stitches. But I could do sutures in my sleep.”

Oliver frowned. 

“There was a glass coffee table I might have crashed through when we were fighting over the gun,” Chloe said. “Clark whooshed in before it got out of control. We did learn some important stuff,” her tone was ruthlessly cheerful. “Emil suggested that Clark use his new found power, and he did,” her eyes narrowed. “Turns out that Alia, aka, my murderer in the future Lois visited, killed Jor-El. Zod killed _her_.”

Oliver sat back, his eyebrows rising as he processed that. “So, the future is changing.”

“And _that_ is why Clark pulled the trigger on the towers.”

Oliver nodded. “Huh. That’s good, then,” he said. “Score this as a win for our side.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Fight. _Gun_? Probably want to hear a bit more about that at some point. Did you leave anything else out?”

“Clark may have threatened to kill Tess,” Chloe said. “Before that, she suggested we team up and help Clark take over to lead the Kandorians, which was interesting, because I don’t think she knew that Clark got left behind in the super power department when the Kandorian’s turned the sun red. She seemed genuinely shocked about that.”

“So, whatever she saw didn’t have a lot to do with Clark, but was enough that she felt that she had seen enough,” Oliver guessed. “That is interesting.”

“Isn’t it?” Chloe agreed. “Ideas?”

Emil shook his head. He thought it was obvious. “She saw herself die,” he said. “You watch till the end. That’s the end. Her behavior since then doesn’t suggest that she saw something that made her want to change sides.”

Oliver thought that sounded like a sound theory. “No chance Lois is going to remember what she saw?”

“None,” Emil told him.

He finished his late dinner and beer and wondered when Emil was going to leave now that it was half past one and time for bed. 

“Do I need to take you home, man?” Oliver asked while Chloe was cleaning up. 

Emil patted the couch. “I can sleep here,” he said. “I’ve done it before.”

“Hmm.” Oliver’s lips pursed in thought as he watched Chloe sort garbage into the recycling bins. 

Emil yawned. “Yeah, a couple of times. It’s more comfortable than it looks,” he said, rubbing his chest and burping. 

Oliver’s eyes narrowed, and he gave Emil a sideways look.

The doctor rolled his eyes. “Please don’t tell me that you’ve had sex on the couch and there is some sentimental or territorial attachment to the couch that I’ve violated.”

Oliver did a little back and forth thing with his head. “Yeah.”

“Sentimental or territorial?”

“Yeah, sex.” Oliver held up his hand, index finger and thumb an inch apart. “Sentimental and territorial. I’m processing it. I’ll be over it in a minute,” he assured him. 

“Does anyone else know?” Emil asked.

Oliver smirked. “Chloe.”

Emil just sighed. “Whatever. I was kind of into her. I’m processing it. I’ll get over it,” he deadpanned.

“Uh-huh. That’s why I let you in on it,” Oliver confided under his breath. “That, and doctor/patient confidentiality.”

Emil shook his head. “Doesn’t count. There is no expectation of privacy in a conversation with your physician about your attachment to a couch,” he said. “But, I’m nothing if not discreet. Let me know if you decide to tell Bart.”

Oliver responded with a humorless grunt. “We’re not telling anybody. Yet.” 

“You implied as much by invoking confidentiality. Any reason why?”

Oliver rubbed his eyes. He looked tired for a moment. “Does the expression ‘hoist with his own petard’ mean anything to you?”

“Given what I know of the parties, the context is rife with possibilities,” Emil admitted. 

“So, we’re good?”

Emil looked over at Chloe, and nodded. “She’s pretty amazing,” he said. “But, she has difficulty establishing and maintaining trust and intimacy that suggest unresolved abandonment issues, with the further complication of post-traumatic stress disorder. She meets most of the criteria,” he shook his head. “It’s difficult to date when you start diagnosing.”

Oliver nodded. “I’ll bet. Say that louder, and you’ll get a hoist on your own petard demonstration.”

Emil rolled his eyes. “I’m not that stoned,” he said, nodding at Chloe who had stopped what she was doing in the kitchen to look at them.

“I hope I’m wrong about the PTSD,” Emil told him, his lips barely moving. “We’re good.”

Chloe was coming back. “What are you whispering about over here?”

With her hands on her hips, she looked and sounded like a grade school teacher. Emil froze, and Oliver snickered at him. They had to get Emil stoned again. He was hilarious.

“Emil was just telling me how amazing you are,” Oliver said easily. It was true if you separated it from the implied bag of crazy, which wasn’t exactly a newsflash to him. “He’s going to crash here, so why don’t you get your stuff and I’ll make sure you get home.”

He got a highly skeptical look from her, but she didn’t argue, and a few minutes later, she climbed the stairs to her living space to get a pillow, sheets, and a blanket for Emil. 

Oliver rubbed his face, yawning. “Tomorrow is going to be insane. Luthor Corp emergency board meeting,” he predicted. “Lots of demands for answers so the finger pointing doesn’t seem gratuitous or premature, not that it will stop the avalanche of pre-emptive blame.”

Emil nodded. “Lunch? Round of golf?”

Oliver snorted. He had time for golf? On the other hand, a round of golf with someone who hated playing golf as an obligatory business social activity was surprisingly fun. “Text me.”

Chloe came back down with a zippered plastic bed full of bedding, and a bigger than normal purse. She dropped off the bedding and retrieved her laptop. Oliver hauled himself back to his feet, watching her with a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. He had been looking forward to getting back to the city and to her. It was a nice feeling, he decided. 

“Are you sure that you want to stay here?” she asked Emil. “Oliver can drive you home.”

Behind Chloe’s back, Oliver was shaking his head no.

“I’m fine,” Emil said. “I’ve got rounds in the morning, and a change of clothes at the office, so this is good.”

Mollified, she thanked him for coming back to help her with the re-boot.

Oliver blinked through a jaw-cracking yawn, and Chloe caught it next. “I’m beat,” she said. 

“Let’s get out of here so Emil can get some sleep,” he prodded her along, opening the door for her. 

At the elevator, she gave him a look that she hoped that he would correctly interpret as ‘we’re still on camera’.

He waited until the elevator doors were closing to turn to her, cupping her jaw while he looked at her bruised face. “Did you ice that?” he asked, lightly touching the bruise on her cheek. 

“Yes.”

His thumb grazed her lower lip and his head started to descend. She pulled back. “Cameras?”

He gave her a faintly exasperated look. “Emil knows,” he said.

“No he doesn’t,” Chloe refuted automatically. Then she remembered that they had been having what appeared to be a low voiced cryptic exchange while she was cleaning up. 

Her eyes narrowed on him. “What did you _do_?”

“Nothing. I didn’t lie, because that would be stupid and rude, and,” he frowned at her. “I have plenty of stuff that I have to lie about on a regular basis, so I’m not lying to someone I trust with my secrets.”

“But, we agreed that—“

“He figured it out—“

“And—“ she huffed a sigh, torn from being annoyed that he’d lie his ass off to protect his Green Arrow identity, but when it came to their . . . deliberately undefined whatever, he was indignant about lying. On the other hand, Emil knew about Oliver’s alter-ego, so he had a point. “Oh . . .”

He kissed the corner of her mouth. “Quit freaking out. It’s fine. Are you okay? You look like hell.”

She grimaced. “I probably look better than I feel,” she admitted, wincing as he cupped the back of her head, finding the spot where she had a big goose egg. 

He kissed her forehead. “Did Tess pull a gun on you?”

His tone was subdued enough to warn her that he was concerned about that.

Her eyes closed. “No,” she suddenly felt exhausted. “I completely lost it today,” she said. “I made Lois cry, and I broke into Tess’ office at the Daily Planet with a plan to hack her computer and then went Rambo on her.”

He was playing with the ends of her hair. “It was out of your control,” he reminded her.

She still felt uneasy about it. There was a lot about what she had done today that she recognized in herself, and it rattled her. The truth was that she resented how Clark’s attention was so easily diverted by Lois over the most mundane things when he couldn’t spare her five minutes. And then there was the fact that she might have killed Tess Mercer. Chloe distinctly remembered thinking about it when she had aimed the gun at Tess. She was just so tired of Tess messing around with stuff that she didn’t understand, and it hadn’t escaped Chloe’s attention that Tess was another insanely dangerous person that tapped the infinite well of Clark’s patience and forgiveness while she was stuck in the penalty box.

It was exhausting to have your perfectly logical reason for thinking about killing someone spoiled by a bunch of petty crap that sounded like a repeat of high school, but it was unnerving to have a perfectly logical reason for thinking about killing someone.

The elevator opened on the ground floor and they stepped out. Oliver had his arm around her shoulders. “Come home with me,” he invited, tilting his head so he could see her face.

He could see a refusal in her averted gaze and the beginnings of a polite smile. 

“I need to talk to Lois,” she said. “I should go home.”

“It can wait till morning,” he said. “Look, I’m going to get a shower and a change of clothes, and then I have to get to the office. “Lois isn’t going to be in Smallville. If Clark’s voodoo wore off, then Lois is probably going to be at the RAO Tower trying to get the story,” he pushed her hair behind her ears. 

He was right, Chloe realized. That was exactly what Lois would do. That was probably where Clark was too. And possibly Tess, though she was more likely to be at Luthor Corp plaza, or conciliating her would be megalomaniac Zod at the mansion. 

She let Oliver steer her out to his car. Even ten blocks away from the burning towers, the air was acrid with smoke. It had to be done, she reminded herself. Now that Clark had finally done what she had been telling him to do for months, she couldn’t duck her share of responsibility for the destruction of the tower. 

“Was anyone hurt?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “No loss of life, but there were some people who were injured, and . . . investors, some of whom are going to feel like _they_ got torched,” he said as he opened the car door for her.

Chloe got in the car. She had a backup plan in place. If the RAO Towers had opened in the morning, she had been prepared to tell Clark and Oliver about the arsenal she had been building. By destroying the towers, Clark bought them more time. 

Her brain went blank when she tried to think of what came next. 

When they reached the Clocktower penthouse, Oliver was already on his phone, fielding calls from the office. Chloe toasted a bagel while he was in the shower and ate it on the balcony while she watched the building smolder in the distance. As much as she wanted the building down, it was an unsettling reminder of just how much destructive force a Kryptonian in Earth’s atmosphere wielded. 

When Oliver found her out there he was dressed for work again. He squeezed her hip and kissed her temple. “Why don’t you go to bed? Get a couple of hours of sleep. I’ll bring breakfast when I can break away again.”

“You are going to have a terrible day,” she guessed.

“It’s going to be a long one,” he predicted. “Get someone to cover for me tonight? I’m going to need to crash.”

She nodded, leaning against him briefly, absorbing the familiar impression of his body against hers, soaking in comfort from the embrace, and trying to give some back as she hugged his arms. His phone rang again, and he sighed. “Okay. Got to go,” he said, kissing her.

 

Victor was available to cover patrolling in Metropolis for a few days, and Chloe figured that while he was there, they should start working on more security upgrades for Watchtower. Oliver had already ordered a refit for the Watchtower’s stained glass windows, which would soon be reinforced with a titanium iris that would close in seconds to prevent someone from breaking through one of the large stained glass windows. 

Victor was working on other points of access. The elevator served the entire building, but he was adding biometric security scans to keep their floor from being accidentally accessed or infiltrated. 

Chloe was looking for a more permanent home for the Kryptonite weapons she had finagled. They had to be stored somewhere secure, accessible, and in a place where Clark would not accidentally stumble upon them. She was looking at foreclosed property in the run down industrial district near the river, hoping to acquire something cheap and readily securable that wouldn’t draw attention. There was a row of rundown buildings that were on the edge of the old distillery district that looked promising until she discovered that they were on a watch list for a historic preservation group. 

The money from Jimmy’s life insurance policy was spent before she had it. Her original plan had been to replace the money she took from Isis and the funds she grabbed from the JL Industries special projects account. 

She paid back Isis, but paying back the JL Industries special projects account was not going to happen anytime soon. She was familiar enough with the financial reports generated by JL Industries to have a fairly good idea where she could skim money, and she used her access to get into the formulas that were used to recover cost to internal departments. Every office had a cost recovery allocation that was recalculated monthly. She adjusted the expenses and the recoveries to add one hundredth of a point to the expenses and an equivalent percentage to the cost recovery allocation. A subroutine for rounding dumped the extraneous one hundredth of a percent to a reserve line that was used routinely to replace investment losses on pension funds.

She created new instructions to issue payment to a numbered account.

After the first month, she had trimmed her formula back to slow down the growth of the fund since it generated $250,000 in a five-day period. She missed a few obscure corporate divisions, and someone in accounting actually caught that and helpfully corrected her formula without realizing what it was doing. 

She ran the numbers and realized that the fund would transfer over two million dollars in a month. 

At this rate, she was going to be able to pay off their vendors, secure storage space, and restore the money from the special projects account within a few months. 

“Chloe,” Victor’s voice intruded on her brooding. 

She pasted on a receptive smile.

He was working from another console, frowning at something. “You’ve got some digital files from the security cameras in quarantine,” he said. “What’s that about?”

“It’s—uh—I live here,” she said. She made a face. “Sometimes I’m here and stuff that is just—“ she shook her head. “It’s personal.”

“Personal?” he tilted his head to one side. “Yeah, we ought to build something in for that,” he mused. “Let me think about how to do that, but in the meantime I’m going to set this quarantine to purge files every three days.”

She should have done that. 

Victor just nodded, watching as she went to get a cup of coffee from the kitchen. He looked around at the war room. “You don’t get out of here a lot, do you?”

“I . . . not so much,” she admitted. 

“I’m not criticizing,” he told her quickly. “I get it. It’s like Ollie figuring out how to build a team before we knew exactly what we were meant for. This,” he gestured around them, “What you’ve done here? This is going to make a difference.”

Holding her coffee cup, Chloe leaned against the wall, looking out the window through the multicolored glass. “I had a more specific purpose in mind,” she pointed out. “We’re not those people anymore,” she went on. “I want to save the world, and I used to believe that no matter how great the challenge, no matter how difficult the choices were, that in the end, we would always prevail.” 

She shook her head. “I vacillate between wanting to find that naive version of me and shake some sense into her, and wanting to be her again.”

“Let me know if you find a balance between those two, and then tell me how you did it,” Victor said. 

Oliver called in around dinnertime to check in. “I’m going home to sleep for the next twelve hours,” he claimed.

“Cyborg is covering the city tonight,” she said. “I’m going home to have dinner with Lois.”

“Pencil me in for some one-on-one time?” 

“Yeah,” she quashed the disappointment she felt. He needed rest. “I’m going to send an update out for Watchtower. Victor’s got some people coming in for hardware installation over the next few days, and you should not be seen over here.”

“M’hmm,” he grunted. “But, that doesn’t mean that I’m not going to see you,” he said. “I’ve got a Luthor Corp meeting tomorrow, and then I have to fly back to Star City to wrap up the business that I dropped, and I’ll be back on Friday. Probably in the afternoon. But, I’d like to see you before then,” he said. “I’m sorry, but we are going to have to postpone the weekend getaway.”

“I kind of worked that out already.” 

“Yeah, so . . . I was thinking about that—“

“What are you doing right now?” 

“Sitting in traffic. With the detours, traffic downtown is a mess,” he told her. “Anyway, Star City, this weekend? Before you say no—“

“Oliver!”

“Chloe!” he mocked. “There is an event at the Civic Center that I thought you might be interested in. Look it up. It’s sold out, but I can get a ticket for you for the lecture and the dinner,” he said.

Her curiosity was piqued. Her fingers flew over her keyboard to call up the Star City Civic Center’s event calendar. There was a Robert and Laura Queen Foundation sponsored lecture series with winners of the George K. Polk Awards for Excellence in Journalism this weekend. Seven of the thirteen awardees for the year were appearing. Their names were as familiar to Chloe as the roster of the Metropolis Meteors was to Clark. 

“Chloe?”

“Yes,” she said. 

There was a pause on his end. “Yes, you are still there, or yes, get the ticket?”

“Still here,” she said. She wanted to go. It would be the most normal thing she had done in so long that it was hard to find a point in which normal became rare. 

“Okay. I’m not going to the lecture, but I’ll be at the dinner, so if I do one of those ‘oh my God! So surprised to see you’ things, just roll with it.”

She laughed, oddly touched that he was making sure that there were no date overtones to the event. “I want to go,” she said. She really wanted to go.

“No pressure. If you can make it, let me know and you can fly back with me,” he said.

 

The first shipment of weapons arrived in a shipping container. Victor took care of making the payment and checking the inventory to make sure that they received what they had paid for. Since used shipping containers were cheap and portable, they decided to go with that for the rest of the deliveries.

Now that the towers were destroyed, Chloe felt that it was safe to scale back. They had a stockpile of kryptonite, which was the most expensive and time consuming raw material. They could ramp up quickly if they had to.

Oliver flew back to Star City without her. She told him that she was too busy, but she didn’t have a lot to do. Watchtower was arguably the most secure site in all of Metropolis, including the Federal Reserve bank. Lois was working twelve-hour days on the RAO Tower’s story. She had unearthed a source in the Zoning Commission who had blown the whistle on people taking bribes to speed the project through the approval process. The idea that the towers had come down due to shoddy construction made the front page, and her cousin was coming into her own as an investigative reporter.

Clark was busy trying to allay the concerns of the Kandorians. 

And Chloe was sipping a Cosmo at the Ace of Clubs at Lois’ Banner Bash. Her cousin’s latest article about the RAO Towers Zonning Commission scandal was the lead. The party had begun at happy hour, flash mob fashion, led by the interns serenading Lois with ‘We Are the Champions’ like she had won the Super Bowl. 

If she had gone to Star City, she would have missed this. She took her phone out and snapped a picture of Lois, sitting on the bar with a paper crown on her head from a left over Christmas cracker. She put her drink down to text it to Oliver with the caption: Future George K. Polk honoree.

Judy Roth, one of Chloe’s mentors when Judy was covering the city desk, waved her over and introduced her to the people at her table. “How have you been?” she asked.

“Good,” Chloe said, smiling politely. “You?”

Judy waved her left hand, and Chloe took it to admire her engagement ring. “Cheryl and I are going to get married in Boston in May,” she said. 

“Congratulations,” Chloe’s smile was directed to both women. Cheryl was chatting with Eric Maclean. Will smiled back at her, nodding at her in a non-verbal hello. Will was one of the three reporters assigned as leads on Black Thursday coverage. 

“Will and Maya split up,” Judy told her, giving her a meaningful look.

Chloe vaguely remembered that there had been a lot of speculation about how long that marriage was going to last given that Will was prone to forgetting that he was married when he was working on a big story. 

“That’s too bad,” she said.

“Are you still working for Lana Lang’s foundation?” Judy asked.

Chloe shook her head. “I’m on the board in an advisory capacity, representing Lana, but we hired a new director a few months ago.”

A seat opened up at the table and Chloe took it. Will wandered off to the bar, Cheryl pulled out her I-pad to show Chloe the website she had built for the wedding. Cheryl taught literature at a private school, and their honeymoon was a New England writer’s retreat in New Hampshire sponsored by Cheryl’s alma mater. 

Mary Carroll joined them briefly to look at the slideshow of engagement photos, mentioning in passing that her oldest daughter had been accepted to Brown. From the looks exchanged by the others at the table, Chloe got the feeling that Mary found an excuse to work _that_ into conversation frequently. She wanted to know if Chloe had returned to college to finish her degree.

“Haven’t had time,” she said.

Mary gave her a pointed look. “Don’t let too much time go by. Your credits won’t be worth anything if you do,” she warned. “I left before my senior year when Caroline was born, and I was shocked when I started back when she entered kindergarten by how few of my credits would count towards a major.”

This launched a spirited conversation about a report that had come out of a think tank in Washington about higher education and non-traditional students and the implications for the working poor. Chloe soaked it up, feeling that old itch in the back of her brain. 

 

At the bar, Lois was checking her cellphone for messages from Clark. He had come over with them from the bullpen, and left to cover a press conference. He said that he would be back. Oliver forwarded her a picture that Chloe had sent him with his own congratulations appended.

Looking for her cousin, she found her in a corner, talking with Judy Roth. Eric Maclean appeared at Lois side, waiting for the bartender to get to him. He gave her a friendly nod. “Good job on the zoning commission story, Lane,” he said.

“Thanks,” Lois beamed at him.

“Hey, I was wondering . . . Chloe Sullivan is your cousin, isn’t she?”

That was unexpected, but interesting. Eric Maclean had an office on the fourth floor. He was over thirty, and recently divorced. He had wavy dirty blond hair that was almost shoulder length that he brushed back away from his face, and a lean runner’s body. He ran or biked to work. 

If anything Lois’ smile became brighter. “Yes, she is.”

“What’s the situation?” he asked. “I know that she and Olsen had a lot of problems after they got married, and . . . weren’t they divorced?”

Lois nodded. “Where are you going with this?” She was mentally tallying up everything she could remember about him. No kids? Kept a closet of clothes in the office. He looked good in a suit. He was laid back. In a press scrum, he was the guy near the front who let everyone shout out the obvious questions, biding his time. 

“She’s cute,” he said, shrugging. “Is she seeing anyone?”

“No,” Lois drew the word out. If all he got about Chloe was cute, he was probably not worthy of her cousin. “What kind of cute?”

“I get the sense that there is a lot going on there.”

“Good answer,” Lois relaxed a little. “Interested?”

The bartender interrupted to get Eric’s drink order. He ordered a beer, turning back to Lois. “Yeah,” he said. “Very interested.”

“Very interested?” Lois grinned. “Okay. Well, what are you doing over here?” 

He chuckled, shaking his head. “If you ever give up reporting, I think you could be a professional mean girl,” he said. 

Lois’ eyebrows rose. “That’s a profession?”

“You’ve met Tess Mercer,” he pointed out.

Lois extended her hand. When Eric took it, she left the bar with a hop and shimmy to work out the wrinkles in her dress. “Come along, grasshopper. A couple of things: my cousin is smart, generous to a fault, and the best person I know. If you can’t be bothered to spend some time getting to know her, then don’t expect to make it on to her radar.”

Eric pulled out his wallet to pay for his drink, waving off the change. Lois was already three steps past him, so he followed her.

“Hey, cuz!” Lois greeted Chloe. 

Perched on a counter height chair, Chloe gave Lois a one armed hug, congratulating her. “Awesome story, Lois. You really nailed it,” she said, without a shred of irony at the parts of the story that eluded her cousin. Lois had uncovered a serious breach in the execution of the Zoning Commission’s responsibility to the community. 

“Yeah,” Lois agreed without a hint of modesty.

Her audience laughed at her brazen preening, and Chloe scooted over to share her perch with her cousin. 

“Did you get anything to eat?” Lois asked. She turned to Eric. “My cousin survives on coffee and pastry,” Lois told him; she did a little circular motion with her finger. “You know each other, right? Chloe, you remember Eric? And—“

“Absolutely,” Eric stepped into the opening Lois had created. “I didn’t want to interrupt the wedding talk. Hi, Chloe,” he waved with his fingers, hanging on to a beer while dragging another chair over and offering it to Lois.

“What have you been up to? I haven’t seen you in a while,” he said, moving into the space between Lois and Chloe when Lois took the chair that he procured for her. 

Chloe shrugged, “I keep busy,” she said. “I’ve seen your byline—covering business news now?”

“I’m still interested in environmental issues, but that’s been moving me more to the business side of news rather than policy and law.”

Lois leaned in, “Chloe works for Oliver Queen,” she told Eric.

Chloe’s smile was polite. She reached for the menu.

“Directly, or do you work for Queen Industries?” Eric asked.

She was reading the appetizer list, and gave him a distracted, “Yes,” and craned her neck looking for a server, glancing over at Lois. “Do you want to split something?” she asked.

Cheryl and Judy had their heads together and were looking at the menu as well. The conversation glided back to Lois’ article, and speculation about whether anyone was going to be indicted. Taking note of Chloe’s reluctance to talk about work, Eric kept her entertained with a few anecdotes, ordered a drink for her, and when Lois surrendered her seat to visit with people at another table, he took Lois’ place.

Her phone vibrated and she checked it, finding a reply from Oliver and a text from Clark saying that he was on the way. The reply from Oliver made her smile.

She looked for Chloe and snapped a picture of her. She sent it to Oliver, typing out: 

Out celebrating with Chlo. 

Around nine, Lois came back, with Clark trailing her. “Chloe! Smallville and I are going to get something for dinner. Come on,” she urged. “I need some family time. You can call Eric tomorrow—or why don’t you get together for lunch next week?”

Chloe looked startled enough, that Eric just passed her his business card. “Call me,” he invited. “I’d love to talk more,” he said.

Chloe nodded while Lois asked Clark to get their coats. She slipped the card into her purse and left the table. Clark appeared with Lois coat over his arm, holding Chloe’s so she could put it on while Lois spoke to Eric for a moment longer.

After she slipped into her coat with Clark’s assistance, the hooked her arm through Chloe’s, determined not to let her run off. “We’re going to hang out,” she insisted.

“Okay,” Chloe surrendered. 

“I like him,” Lois ventured.

Chloe gave Lois a sideways look. 

“Don’t you think he’s cute?” Lois looked back at him, and then at Chloe.

Chloe started to deny it, and then gave up. “I had a little crush on him when I was an intern,” she admitted. 

Lois looked delighted with that nugget. “He’s available,” she said. 

“Really!” Chloe acted surprised. “Because I thought you were trying to set me up with a married guy.”

Clark snorted a laugh at that, and Chloe tilted her head back to offer him a tentative smile.

Lois scowled at them. “Don’t encourage,” she scolded Clark. “Hey! Have you been to the place over on Armory?”

Chloe tilted her head. “By the old post office? I tried to—Oliver and I were going to lunch, and there was a huge wait for a table.”

“Let’s do that,” Lois looked back at Clark. “Honey?”

“Fine with me,” Clark agreed.

They were seated in a booth near the windows. Chloe ordered the cream of asparagus soup after she saw a waiter walk it by to another table. It was served in a shallow bowl with toasted slivers of almonds arranged in a chrysanthemum pattern. Clark ordered a potpie and Lois ordered crepes. They ended up switching plates mid-meal when Lois’ order envy got the best of her. She insisted that Chloe had to taste the potpie. 

“Everything is good,” Chloe agreed. 

The waiter returned to check on them, and to ask how to divide the check.

“I’ve got it,” Clark volunteered as Chloe reached for her purse.

Lois pointed at her cousin. “Hey? See her? Tell your boss that if she is waiting for a table that she’s probably going to be meeting her boss. Oliver Queen. You might want to get her seated.”

The waiter looked over at Chloe, nodding. “Good to know.”

“Lo?” Chloe tilted her head toward Lois. “Don’t tell people that I work for Oliver.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to talk about the work I do or Oliver, with reporters. And if Ollie doesn’t feel the need to demand to be seated ahead of other people, I’m not going to do it using his name.”

Clark was nodding, and Lois sighed. “Okay, fair point,” she allowed.

The manager brought the check over for Clark and introduced himself to Chloe. “Please, don’t mind my cousin.”

He gave her his card. “No, it’s no problem. We are busy at lunch, but if Mr. Queen’s assistant calls, we’ll hold a table for him,” he said.

“Thank you. I’ll be sure to let him know,” Chloe said while Lois looked smug.

Outside on the sidewalk, Lois told her that she was planning to stay over at the Kent farm, and Chloe bade both of them a good night before heading back to Watchtower.

She was sitting by herself in her Tower under the stained glass window. Jonn had covered the patrol for the night and Carter had joined him. They had little need for her, but she stayed on until they concluded their patrol. She logged crime stats and stared moodily at the key left on her blotter. 

She was organizing her notes, updating what amounted to a report on her Kryptonite weapons operation that would continue to sit in her email outbox under password protection. Every few days she reset the auto send date for a few days in advance. If she ever failed to go more than a couple of days without checking, the email would deliver to Oliver, Emil, and Victor, filling them in on what she had done. Eventually Oliver would figure out that Victor had helped her, but she didn’t want him to be distracted by that if he had to act without her. 

The system chimed, and the smooth female voice Victor had programed for Watchtower announced: “Incoming call, Oliver Queen.”

A click of her mouse brought him to her on a half a dozen monitors. She saved her changes to the date on her email and closed the program. 

“Early night?” she asked. 

He nodded. “I have an early meeting tomorrow, and then I’m on my way back.”

Some subtle tension that she hadn’t been aware of eased. “That’s . . . you know that we are down this weekend for plumbing and other repairs.”

He nodded, “Yeah, I was thinking about that. We might have to find something to do.”

“I don’t know, Ollie. I was looking forward to laundry, and a pedicure.”

“I have a washer and dryer. I’m sure we’ll think of something to do between loads.”

“This is stupid. I could have spent the weekend with you,” Chloe said suddenly. 

“No,” Oliver shook his head. “You would have missed Lois’ big triumph. “

“Well . . . yeah, but . . . I’m going to re-book our weekend,” she said, opening a drawer in her desk to look for the flyer she had printed. “I must have left it at the apartment,” she said. “I have a flyer—“

“Or, we could come out here. To Star City. We don’t have to go out if you don’t want to—“

“Did you even look at the website?” she asked. “Most of the rooms have a fireplace.”

“I knew it,” he pointed at her. “You’ve got some” he wiggled his fingers at her, “kink about fireplaces.”

“Yep,” she owned it. “Fireplaces and flannel. In fact, when I think about you and miles of tartan spread out in front of a fireplace--“

“If I’m naked in this scenario, you are—“

“Also naked, or wearing that sweater you had on."

“Good to know. I’m warming up to this, no pun intended. I expect a shower of rose petals.”

She smiled at that. “Of course. Rose petals, candles, and a bottle of Two-Buck Chuck.”

“You make me feel special, baby,” Oliver deadpanned. 

She grinned back at him. “Oh, I’ve got some special stuff planned. I’ve got moves you’ve never seen, Oliver.”

“Wow, breaking out the Kama Sutra according to Chloe Sullivan? I thought you weren’t bendy?”

“Pfft. You _are_ ,” she retorted. 

“Are you going to pick me up at the airport tomorrow?” he asked.

She yawned, nodding. “Sure.”

“Okay. If you are driving home tonight, drink some coffee, okay? You sound sleepy.”

“I will. I miss you. Text me your arrival time, and travel safe,” Chloe said, sitting up, lightly slapping her own face. 

“I miss you too,” Oliver said. “Good night, Chloe.”

Did she think about Eric Maclean? Sure. Lois wasn't exactly subtle, and Chloe was flattered that he seemed interested. She knew she could have kept it casual. The thing that kept her from doing that was that what she had going on with Oliver worked for both of them. It hadn't become awkward, and she was having fun. She had one admittedly large secret from Oliver, but that was nothing compared to the secrets she was used to keeping. If she had any idea how easy and fun a relationship could be if you swept all the relationship junk off the table, she wouldn't have believed it.


	6. Chapter 6

Sitting in the driver’s seat of his Range Rover, Oliver Queen watched the sun come up on one of Metropolis’ more un-lovely, less traveled neighborhoods. He was staking out Teeter’s Shipping and Storage, a dusty gravel lot with a seemingly random arrangement and assortment of shipping containers in the shadow of an interstate exchange that he had never been remotely tempted to use before. Given the number of signs advertising storage facilities he had passed on the highway, he was surprised that the exit had not been labeled ‘Storageville’ rather than ‘Pheasant Hill’.

No pheasant. No hill. In his admittedly limited experience, the good people of Kansas tended to favor banal accuracy over poetic license. 

He rubbed his face, cataloging too much coffee and too little sleep. The imaginary asshat drinking buddy and wingman in his head was warming up to a punch drunk roll.

He briefly considered slapping his own face. Lightly, of course. His face was probably factored into some kind of Queen Industries risk management plan. It was probably insured. If it wasn’t, it ought to be, he decided with a smirk, imagining the email he could send to liven up the day in QI’s risk management office. 

Oliver shared one thing with his alter ego—other than washboard abs and a dazzling personality, and the same taste in—okay! He shared several things with Green Arrow, foremost: a mutual loathing of stakeouts and waiting in general. 

This was how someone like Oliver Queen ended up being an expert marksman with a bow. It was all down to his inability to tolerate boredom. Yep, he nodded to that thought, and had a brief, sad moment of something to do when his Blackberry vibrated. Text message! 

The text was a notification about the Queen Industries intra-net blog. It was just the type of thing that his company did that made Mercy look like she wanted to fire people for wearing Halloween costumes to work. That was a true story from last Halloween. A low-level Luthor Corp employee in tax compliance came to work on Halloween in a flapper costume because he thought that the merger, and Oliver’s ginourmous investment in Luthor Corp, meant that the company would be following QI’s lead. Dressing up for Halloween was a celebrated tradition in QI corporate culture, because they were the fun company that still kicked ass. Instead, the poor bastard just outed himself a weekend drag queen, and his boss took him around to meetings all day long because Luthor Corp’s corporate culture valued bullies. 

Oliver heard about it the next day and sent him a gift basket with an all-expenses paid weekend in Vegas for being the Metropolis winner of the costume contest. 

He really hoped that today’s blogging included something in the LOL cats family. Just because he didn’t have a pet, didn’t mean he wasn’t a pet person.

That got him thinking about his own imaginary blog entry for the day. It would start out something like . . . _I didn’t see it coming._

Yesterday had started so well too. More or less. He was waging an all-out campaign to get Chloe to stay over. The day he came back from Star City, she picked him up at the airport. The contractors were in Watchtower working on her plumbing and his incredibly cool and practical armored iris. He couldn’t wait to see it work. They went back to his place—Chloe actually brought her laundry, which he couldn’t help but find funny. They spent the day together, and then right when he thought she was going to not notice that it was getting late, she said that she had to go back to Watchtower to check in with the contractor.

For the past week, they had spent nearly every evening together, and she had an excuse, or she simply woke up and left. 

He wasn’t bothered, exactly. It was even funny how smooth she was about it. With no more than a warm smile and a kiss on his cheek, she breezed out last night as if it was the most natural way to end the evening.

He hadn’t seen that coming. Honestly, he figured her for at least a _little_ clingy, and he was prepared to be gracious about it until she wasn’t. It was ridiculous. His place was convenient, and comfortable. He stocked her favorite coffee. He even collected little soap bars and travel sized bath products for her. 

It was fine. If their little mini-break weekend didn’t crack the embargo on the sleep-over, what he had planned would. While they were out-of-town he was having a fireplace installed in his bedroom. If spending the weekend together didn’t convince her that the world would keep spinning even if they slept together, then he’d just have to go with seeing if he could wear her down.

So, when he saw where JL Industries had a mysterious half a million-dollar payment on a bogus contract, he was caught completely by surprise. 

It took him about thirty seconds to put together that it was Chloe. And before he got to his car to drive out to Smallville, he was pretty sure that Tess knew that it was Chloe, too. A lot of stuff made sense to him now. Little moments when he knew that something was bothering her? Of course, she felt bad. He thought she felt bad because she really wasn’t the morally ambiguous person she was attempting to become by having a secretive affair. Apparently, she was fine with that. She was stealing from him.

It was literally the last thing he ever expected from her. This was coming from a woman who waited six months to do anything about collecting the life insurance Jimmy left for her, and then did nothing with the money. He hoped that she would buy a car, and had considered suggesting specific models. 

Nothing. She didn’t have expensive habits or hobbies. She didn’t seem to care about money other than to pay her bills. Halfway to Smallville, he texted Emil to call him when he had a moment. 

Emil called him back when he was passing the Grandville exit. “Have you made any major expenditures in the last two months that were billed to JL Industries?”

“Yes,” he said. “I bought a portable x-ray machine. They aren’t cheap.”

“Right,” Oliver almost pulled over. He felt a little queasy. “Okay.”

“What’s wrong?” Emil asked.

“Nothing,” Oliver said tightly. 

It was cute how she segued from shocked to guilty to reproachful when he accused her of stealing from him. 

Of course, she wasn’t spending his money on something frivolous. She was spending it on weapons that could be used to fight the Kandorians if they ever gained the abilities that Clark had. It made complete sense. Not stealing from him. _Borrowing_. 

Did it bother him less that she used every penny at her disposal before she got into cost overruns? Actually, no. It bothered him _more_. The money that Jimmy wanted her to have to provide her with security was just gone—according to Chloe, she had spent it before the check arrived. 

 

A Cadillac Escalade rolled onto the lot with a gratuitous spray of gravel. A black trench coated Luthor Corp security manager emerged from the driver’s side. Oliver could tell from the way he was moving when he spotted something off.

“Doom” he narrated. “Miss Mercer is going to threaten to chop my balls off, and then kill me slowly when she remembers that Lex already has my balls in a creepy cabinet full of testicles.” 

He caught a hint of movement out of the corner of his eye and picked up a scope that he had brought with him to get a close-up of the ass chewing. Tess got out of the vehicle and asked a question as she walked over to the container.

Oliver left the overlapping container door unlatched. As soon as the guy reached it, he must have known. “Uh oh, somebody has been busy,” Oliver said sotto voce. 

An enlarged blonde head entered his sight line. More or less on schedule, he concluded, not surprised to find Chloe checking in on her Kryptonite weapons locker. He pocketed the scope and opened the car door, careful to keep it quiet as he got out and made his way over. Tess flung her arm out in a very angry WTF gesture.

‘Mercy, what the hell are you up to?’ Oliver wondered as he watched his toxic ex-girlfriend berate the trench coat outside the empty container.

Chloe, lurking behind a container, looked as stunned as Tess was to see that it was empty, and Oliver briefly considered beating his head against the nearest container. 

‘What the hell am I up to?’ he wondered.

Did he have some kind of dysfunctional attraction to beautiful and brilliant, damaged, duplicitous women? It was not as if this debacle was his first clue that Chloe Sullivan frequently operated outside the sandbox that she kept so tidy for Clark and the rest of their team. When circumstances called for someone to get their hands dirty—when _Chloe_ decided that circumstances called for someone to get their hands dirty, he quickly revised—she was pretty damn quick to wade in. Or recruit him to do it for her if she was busy, or his likelihood of success was higher. 

Apparently, she had swept away the bother of bullying him into doing what she wanted. 

Oliver had enlisted Emil in his operation to relocate the Kryptonian weapons cache, and before the night was out, their normally close-mouthed doctor had given him a lot to think about. While he didn’t precisely defend Chloe’s decision to go stealth on them, he tacitly approved by informing Oliver that it was a mistake for Oliver to tell _him_ about the existence of the weapons.

The long and short of it was that just when he thought he was ready to confront her, he was tired, confused, and still pretty damned angry at her. He thought he was doing a good job of keeping it from her until she accused him of retaliating by shutting her out and keeping the location of the weapons from her.

“Well, you know, Chloe, you can’t have one set of rules for yourself and then a whole _another_ set of rules for everyone else,” he retorted. 

She was visibly struggling to keep this civil. “Clark’s in the Kandorian family now, and I don’t want his loyalties to lead us into another doomsday scenario.”

His eyebrows rose. Really? Did she go there? Because Oliver was there and while he agreed that Clark’s set of rules arbitrarily imposed without discussion sucked, he wasn’t seeing a whole lot of improvement on her set of rules for herself. 

There was blindness and there was . . . whatever the hell that was. She was waiting for an answer. 

“Neither do I,” he said curtly.

“So . . .” there was real dread in her eyes, “do you really think we should tell Clark everything?”

“Absolutely,” he said. She had her hands shoved in the pockets of her coat, and he watched her shoulders hunch as she flinched, reacting like it was a body blow. It made him want to shake her. She could not possibly be worried how Clark would react. The worst Clark would do? Look wounded and raise his voice, and maybe tell Chloe that she disappointed him.

He really wished that Chloe would grow a spine and tell Clark to his face exactly how great a letdown he was in the best friends department. It would do both of them a world of good.

“But, only when the time is right,” he conceded, unwilling to torture her over the prospect of a confrontation with Clark.

She took a deep breath, nodding, then another, looking down at the ground. “Okay,” she said after a moment. 

“Did you ever stop for a moment to wonder what I was going to think if I found out that you were stealing from me?” 

“I—“ she looked tormented. “You weren’t ever supposed to know about this unless it became necessary.”

That wasn’t terribly enlightening. “Do you really think that I’m a danger to Clark?”

“It’s complicated,” she said. “And there will always be things that I do that I don’t tell you about.”

“Don’t do that,” he was furious again. “Don’t turn this around and make it about me not trusting you.”

“Is that what you think this is?”

Was it? There was something in all of this that made him want answers. The problem was that he didn’t know what the question was. Was it about her lack of trust in him? That stung, but if felt incomplete. Was it about the way their non-relationship was stuck in neutral? It was all sunny smiles and flirty, sultry looks when she thought that he wanted to play, and he ought to be okay with that, but he really wasn’t. It was starting to piss him off. It would, he rationalized, piss anyone off. 

Who the hell did she think she was treating him like he was someone she barely had time for unless it was to scratch an itch?

The resentment was hotter than he expected and so freshly minted that he doesn’t entirely trust it. He has a specific reason to be angry right now, and finding other things to be mad about was not going to help.

When he told her that she was the last woman that he thought would be stealing from him, or words to that effect, was that actually true? This wasn’t the first time that he had put the worst possible construction on her actions. He very distinctly recalled threatening to expose her role in Sebastian Kane’s death and accusing her of harboring a serial killer. He might have implied to Clark that she could have had Lois kidnapped from the hospital—which was Tess’s doing, not Chloe—though in his own defense it made perfect sense to him that as Lois’ closest relative, she had enough leverage to get her moved from the hospital. Mostly, it was just that he knew that she was capable of almost anything, and sometimes blinded by her objectives.

He left it at, “I’m too tired to have this conversation. I’ll let you know when I’m ready to talk.”

 

Chloe tried to focus on something other than the queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. She ran a system upgrade for Watchtower. Tess had hacked her before, and she was determined not to let that happen again. At mid-day, Victor called her to tell her that Oliver had asked him to schedule some time with her to upgrade security, which she took as a follow-up message from Oliver that he still wasn’t talking to her right now. He basically said as much when they parted this morning. 

He had a LuthorCorp board meeting on his calendar until 7:30, and Clark was covering what was normally a slow Thursday night patrol—without bothering to check in with her, as usual. She checked in on her Kandorian locator, tweaking the subroutine that looked for anomalies in the travel patterns of her tag and release subjects, and then she trolled the internet for a few hours, looking for something to distract her.

When that didn’t work, she checked in on her Mom, and Lana, and her Dad, trying to ignore the growing realization that there wasn’t anyone she could talk to about the ball of unexamined things that had grown to epic proportions and was now lodged in her chest. The one person she might have talked to . . . was Ollie. She had blown that by ignoring the opportunity to do so before this blew up in her face.

Around 10:00 she left the Watchtower to get a cup her last cup of coffee of the day. Her favorite corner coffee guy was gone, so she started to walk to Metro Café. She was three blocks away when it started raining. And then because her day really couldn’t get worse, she got mugged waiting to cross Broadway. The mugger cut the strap of her purse and shoved her toward the empty street before taking off. 

Great! She was mugged at least once a year, so the universe decided that she was due.

Her phone was in her coat pocket. She was a block from the Daily Planet. Five blocks from Watchtower. Three blocks from Oliver’s penthouse. She could have called Clark. She should have called 911. Rampant paranoia screamed that it was a set up, so she called Lois instead and went straight to voice mail. She walked to Oliver’s. The doorman waved her through and she took the elevator up, unchallenged. When she reached the top, she remembered that her keycard was in her purse.

Her phone rang and she nearly jumped out her skin at the shock of feeling it vibrate in her hand where she was clenching it so hard. 

“Hello?” she answered first, looking at the phone to see that it was Oliver. 

“I’m at the office,” he said.

Right. Because his security system alerted him when the elevator stopped at his floor . . . she nodded, and then realized that he couldn’t hear her nod. “Okay,” she said. “I-um—I’m out of coffee, and—“

“Gotham’s commissioner has a signal light for emergencies,” he quipped.

When she didn’t respond to his joke, he started to click okay on his laptop’s shut down, and then cancelled, and logged back in. “I’m shutting down. Why don’t you put some coffee on, make yourself at home, and I’ll pick up something to eat on the way. Are you hungry for anything in particular?” he asked, tapping on the icon for his security system, and typing his password, one-handed. 

“No,” she sounded like she was out of breath. “I’m just going to go home, like I should have—“

She sounded really off. “What’s wrong?” he asked. 

She didn’t want to tell him. It felt manipulative. He was mad at her. He had a right to be mad at her without her wilting on him. And her keys were in her purse. She wasn’t going anywhere but back to Watchtower until she got the spare set of her keys that . . . she gave to Jimmy, and were probably in the untouched boxes of Jimmy’s stuff that she hadn’t gone through. 

Now that he was logged into his security system, he could bring the cameras in the penthouse up. Chloe was on the camera labeled ‘Elevator’. He enlarged the picture. She’d clearly been caught in the rain from the looks of things. The black and white image made him frown. 

“What are you doing? Go in and get out of your wet clothes,” he said, entering the command for the elevator door to unlock for her.

“What?”

“I’m looking at you on camera. You are soaked,” he pointed out. “Take off your clothes. Go to my bedroom. My robe is on the back of the bathroom door. I’ll be there in five minutes,” he said, as it occurred to him to wonder why she had arrived at his place without her key card. “I just need to know one thing. Are you hurt?”

“N-no,” she said. 

“Okay,” he said, not buying it for an instant. “Don’t you dare leave,” he warned, logging off his computer and shoving it into its case before he retrieved his car keys. “I mean it, Chloe.”

 

Since the streets were practically empty, he was home in less than ten minutes. The doorman greeted him with a nod and a smile. “Good evening, Mr. Queen. Miss Sullivan arrived about ten minutes ago; I figured that you couldn’t be far behind” he said, hitting the elevator call button for the penthouse. 

There was a rotation of doormen, but Richard or Dave were the usual night shift guys. If Dave were here, Ollie would have asked him if Chloe seemed all right. 

The elevator car was parked at the ground floor, waiting for him.

“Thanks, Richard,” he said.

“Have a good night, sir.”

Oliver found his work phone and turned it off. His other ‘work’ phone was in his front left pocket. 

The elevator door opened to the penthouse and Oliver found a pile of sodden clothes on the floor. Not just a little wet, but soaked to the skin, he concluded. “Chloe?” he called, spotting her phone on a side table and taking all of their phones to the charging station at his desk.

“I’m in the kitchen.”

He took the short flight of stairs two at a time, coming to a stop just inside the kitchen. She was barefooted, and dressed in nothing but the cashmere sweater of his that she liked so much. It hung to mid-thigh on her. His robe would have been dragging the ground, he realized. She had a towel wrapped around her head, and she was scooping coffee into the coffee maker, but her hands were shaking. 

“I feel so stupid,” she said abruptly. “I just wanted to see you, and it kept getting in the way of everything, including rational thought—and it’s not fair. To you. I know that. You have a right to be mad at me. You’d be crazy not to.”

‘Crazy’ wasn’t a word that Chloe flung around lightly. Her voice hung on it grimly every single time. Possibly giving himself a cooling down period wasn’t such a great idea. From her demeanor, he had a feeling that the self-flagellation had already started, and she was probably way ahead of him on the verdict. 

He took the scoop from her. “Christ,” his eyes widened. “You are freezing.”

She backed up before he could touch her. “No. That’s not important. It’s not. I’m sorry.”

“Chloe—“

“I’m _so_ sorry,” she said, putting one hand up to hold him back when he kept coming.

“Shut up,” he said, lowering his head to kiss her. The coffee scoop clattered to the floor, scattering coffee everywhere. The towel slipped from her head as he bent her back, kissing her like he could kiss a less frigid body temperature back into her. 

God. It seemed to be working. Chloe went from feeling ridiculous in his sweater and a little intimidated by him when he appeared straight from Luthor Corp in his suit and tie and wingtips, to having his expensive bespoke suit against her skin in places the outside of a suit had never touched while his sinfully soft sweater rubbed against her pebbled skin. His hands found her bare bottom and she didn’t know what was better—the heat of his hands, or the way he kneaded her flesh, or the way his trousers felt on the inside of her legs.

“Wrap your legs around me,” he demanded as he lifted her.

“Ollie, wait,” she said breathlessly.

He buried his face in her neck, setting her on the counter. 

She locked her ankles around his waist and slid her arms around his neck. She really, _really_ didn’t want to need him, but she did.

“What happened to you?” he asked. 

The question tugged at the brightly colored ball of her unexamined things in a totally unnerving way. Her heart was beating so loud that she was sure that he heard it, even while she frantically reminded herself that he had to mean tonight. He didn’t mean, what happened to the idealistic girl who wanted to tell the truth and make the world a better place. What happened to you _tonight_ , was what he was asking. 

“I went out for coffee and got mugged,” she said when he picked her up off the counter. On the balance of what had happened to the earliest and truest version of her, it was kind of lame.

She was back on the counter so fast that the back of her head smacked against the glass door of the cabinet behind her. 

“Damn it, Chloe,” he swore, cupping the back of her head. “You got mugged? And you what? Walked it off? In a downpour?”

He sounded annoyed with her suddenly. Again. She was going to get whiplash.

She counted it off on her fingers. “Went out for coffee. Missed my coffee guy. Went to Metro Café. It started raining. Got mugged waiting to cross the street—“

“Where?”

“Broadway,” she said. “I tried calling Lois, and went to voice mail. Then—“

“You call me,” he gritted out. “You call _me.”_

“Because that’s fair—“

“I don’t give a damn about fair. You aren’t the only one who can multitask. I can be mad at you and still be available for muggings, coffee emergencies—“ 

She scoffed, “You thought coffee emergency was code for make-up sex.”

His expression conveyed volumes of ‘duh’. He ran his hands over Chloe’s arms and legs, reassuring himself at least, that she was in one piece. 

“Yeah . . .” he figured that it was probably worth saying, even if a significant part of him was resentful about his value as a distraction. “I’m definitely available for sex.”

“Too bad,” Chloe retorted, giving him a shove with her foot. “I was just reminded that I’m here for coffee.”

He grabbed her ankle, snorting rudely. “Nope. You are here for the warm-up and comfort sex,” he countered. “You are so obvious,” his hand followed her leg up. 

“You’re so obnoxious.” 

She was looking at his tie like it was a complicated problem. Or Red-K. Her fingertip was sliding back and forth along the margin of his shirt collar at the back of his neck. 

“I can’t believe you told me to shut up,” she complained as he angled his head to kiss her. 

Oliver backed off a little, just brushing her lips with his teasingly as his free hand cupped one of her breasts. He drew the cashmere across her nipple, watching her bite her lower lip.

“This is my favorite sweater,” he told her, since that was going to justify taking it back.

She pulled him in. Chloe kisses, the one’s she started, almost always took him by surprise. There was something so tentative about it. She’d start, and then almost stop, and then go all in, trusting him to not wreck it for her by taking over or being passive. He just went with it. 

Her fingers stroked the back of his neck and her other hand slid under his suit coat. She made a sweet little sound, trapped in her throat when he moved into the space she was giving him between her legs. He used the cashmere to caress her, feeling her react to it even as he sought skin. Her neck, and her shoulder, peeled bare made him break away from her mouth. 

“This is very Jennifer Beals, Flashdance,” he said, smirking a little. 

“Except I’m not wearing a bra,” she pointed out.

“Best part.”

Her hair was still damp and cold, he discovered when he left off molesting her neck long enough to hold her head in his hands and kiss her. She was having a ridiculously hard time figuring out his tie. Which got him thinking about how it would look, wrapped around her wrists—except, not tonight. Not after she had a scare, even if she wanted to dismiss it as a minor inconvenience. But, at some point in the not so distant future, he promised himself, feeling something heavy twist in his chest at how appealing the idea of lavishing attention on her that she could not evade was to him.

“Still jonesing for coffee?” he asked, helping her out with the tie by loosening it. 

She figured it out after he got it started and took his hand, re-directing it down, between her legs, giving him the kind of smile that was going to get her wholesome-girl-next-door merit badge withdrawn. It was his turn to bite his lip to keep from going slack jawed as her eyes closed and her smaller hand guided his, sharing the discovery that she was turned on. 

Her soft, ‘oh’, the kind of sound that went with a happy surprise, fell into the space between them as his fingertips pressed against her, curling inward against the soft, wet depth, not quite inside, massaging the opening before his fingers penetrated. He caught the back of her head in the palm of his hand before it hit the cabinet again, feeling an almost ruthless thrill in the involuntary arching of her back when he stroked her with his fingers. 

Her hand pressed against the back of his, then grabbed his wrist, conveying without words, a plea that he understood. She had put herself out there and pulled him out of bad moments, too. 

“I could fuck you, right here, right now,” he said, nuzzling her throat, nipping at the petal softness of her earlobe while she wrapped her other arm around his shoulder, pulling on his suit coat like she wanted it off, and couldn’t be bothered to be organized about getting him out of it.

“I’m not going to. You know why?”

She shook her head, as much as she could with him controlling it. “It better not be because you are mad,” she said in tone so full of longing that traveled down his spine and straight to his dick.

We are on the same page, Oliver assured his favorite body part. 

“I want you naked, in my bed.”

Her eyes opened and she gave him a look that was already setting up house in his fantasies. “You first,” she challenged. 

How they managed to get to his room without injury wasn’t a mystery. He _was_ a superhero. Crashing into the bedroom door didn’t count since no one got hurt. He got his shoes off as soon as he tossed her on the bed, opening his shirt cuffs while Chloe knelt on the side of the bed, working on the buttons down his chest, and then his belt. His shirt and suit coat came off as a single unit, followed by his pants and socks. His favorite sweater was getting quite a workout as the final layer separating them when she wrapped her arms around him, pulling him down with her, rubbing against him. 

“My favorite sweater,” he reminded her. “Cum stains are a bitch to get out.”

“I’ll buy you another one,” she retorted, freeing one arm and going for it. Her hand stroked him, inadvertently rubbing the head of his cock against the sweater, which was probably part of her evil plan for ruling the world. 

“Stupid stretchy sweater,” he muttered. “I don’t want some knock off from Overstock dot com. I want pure cashmere—oh, fuck,” he groaned, shuddering as he was fondled by her hand and a layer of cashmere. “Hand knitted by . . . nuns,” she freed him from the sweater and was guiding his cock home when she dragged it up, over all of her slick heat to rub him against her clit like he was her personal massager. 

He was totally prepared to resent her for it, but she was biting her lower lip hard enough to draw blood and she looked so close that he just finished pulling his sweater over her head and hooked his arm under her knee. He heaved her an extra foot toward the middle of the bed, and then he was there, sinking into her luscious heat and the little miracle of finding her. It was so good. Still. Damn near perfect the way she felt around him. 

They had been doing this for less than two months. It wasn’t as good. It was better. They knew each other now. 

When he started to brace himself on his elbows and slow things down a little, she knew that move, and met him, pushing up with one arm while she flung the other around his neck and kissed him.

“Harder, “she breathed in his ear. 

He didn’t laugh in her face. That would have been rude. No one who thought she was occasionally bossy had spent enough time in bed with her. 

“Ollie,” she moaned his name as he pulled her leg up higher, to give himself more control over how they came together. He wasn’t feeling her ‘harder’ just yet. He’d figure out what she needed. It wasn’t the urgency of hard and now. He knew how her body moved when she was that out of control. 

He knew . . . or did he? He had not known that she was stealing from him and amassing an arsenal for her own War of the Worlds. 

His hand cradled her ass and he found an angle that put her hard together with his slow. She recognized that, and responded with a sinuous roll of her hips as she lifted her head to kiss him. 

He had been having queasy thoughts about the start of their relationship since he had an epiphany about the timing while brushing his teeth. She had started working on this months ago. Had to have, in order to put together the raw materials and skilled labor. 

While this was going on Watchtower was breached twice. First by Vortigen. Then they were finding out about the Justice Society of America, and dealing with Icicle. 

She took the money from JL Industries two days before they had slept together. They had to talk about this, he thought, kissing her throat as her head fell back. Her hand stroked the side of his face. 

“Oh, God. That’s so good,” she breathed.

He kept going, slow, then hard, until her hands were on his ass, pulling him into her harder as she clenched around him, grinding against him. He threaded his fingers through her hair at the nape of her neck, pulling her head back.

“Are you trying to make me come?” he demanded. 

“Yes,” she whimpered. “I’m so close,” she shuddered, biting her lip and moving under him to make him move faster. “I need . . . I need you . . . now,” she gasped. “Ollie—“

“I’m here,” he said. He spent so much time with her voice in his ear that he heard the fear under the demand. “I’m here,” he pushed aside his growing unease that his impulsive decision to offer her a good time had started something that was going to wreck both of them, to focus on reminding her that she wasn't in this alone.

 

 

Chloe’s normal post-coital behavior involved a trip to the bathroom, then getting dressed for her exit. With her wet clothes still on the floor by the elevator, Chloe found herself stranded in the bathroom without any idea what she was supposed to do next. She prided herself on not being clingy, and she knew enough about Oliver’s behavior with women to know that he usually was the first one out the door. So far, she had managed to stick to her plan and not over stay, or stay over.

“Chloe,” she heard him call out from the other side of the door.

She frowned at the door. She could have been peeing. She rolled her eyes. “Do you need to get in here?” she asked with exaggerated courtesy.

“Uh . . . no,” he responded in kind. “I was going to suggest that you take a shower since you are kind of stuck here until I get up off my ass and go get some dry clothes for you.”

“Oh,” she made a face at the door. That was actually a pretty good idea. “Yeah. Good idea,” she called out lamely.

She decided that Ollie’s little swimmers were probably in the toilet doing the backstroke. She was pretty sure that even his sperm was repelled by commitment. She put the lid down and flushed, feeling like more of a spaz than usual as she went to investigate his shower. She had been in here before, but hadn't been there strictly for bathing. It was a ridiculously complicated thing that made her feel a little left behind on the latest and greatest in modern plumbing, but she figured out how to get the overhead part running. He had a bottle of soap and another bottle of shampoo on the shower shelf. There was a cabinet next to the shower with a basket of smaller bottles. She was amused to find sample sized bath products from hotels. 

Apparently even billionaires pinch the hotel soaps. She found a couple of lemon scented products that didn’t immediately call to mind furniture polish, and a washcloth. The shower was steaming up behind the glass when she stepped in. It was a little too hot, so she adjusted it and just for kicks, tried some of the other knobs to get the whole multidirectional effect, laughing at how elaborate it was. 

Pre-make-up sex now had its own cheering section, she decided, flashing back to her very short and spaztastic cheerleading career without a twinge of regret as she lathered her hair, rinsed, and slathered on conditioner. The body shampoo had a nice hint of coconut, she discovered, taking her time to lather up the washcloth and enjoy the whole multi fauceted shower experience. 

She smirked at her own bad pun before rinsing the conditioner out of her hair. Shutting everything off was almost more complicated than figuring out how to turn it on. Before she finished forming the thought that she was stranded without a towel, Ollie was there, tapping on the glass before opening the door. He had pulled on a pair of pants that looked like they belonged to a set of pajamas. While she was in the shower he had placed a thick spa mat outside the shower door, and he had a towel over his arm.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t think to get you a rubber ducky,” he said.

And there he is. Hot masseuse-slash- cabana boy Oliver instantly transformed into smart-ass Ollie. 

She reached for the towel, and he crooked a finger, motioning her forward, out of the delicious steamy confines of the shower. 

“Aw, come on!” she protested, hugging herself. “I’ll get cold again.”

“I’m not going to let you get cold.”

He was as good as his word. As soon as she stepped out he wrapped a warm bath sheet around her and grabbed another towel to soak up the water from her hair. It was kind of annoying to find that he was better at drying her off than she was. He used the towel to squeeze the water out of her hair without rubbing and to blot it off her skin. 

He probably practiced, she thought. She was pretty sure that this was in someone’s billionaire hottie playbook. 

“I thought you were going to get dry clothes for me,” she said when he produced what was probably the other half of his pajamas in the form of a t-shirt that covered her to mid-thigh. She gave the basket of bath products a longing look, wondering if there was moisturizer in there that would round off her tropical fruit basket scented experience.

“Yeah,” he gave her a look that questioned her good sense. “I’m going to run out in the middle of the night, in the rain, to preserve your perfect record.”

Her eyebrows rose. Huh. That sounded a little snarky. “A good guest never overstays their welcome,” she tried to say primly. It didn’t come out that way. It came out a little prissier than she intended.

“Really? Are you going to go with that?”

She didn’t know what his problem was. He never made her feel like she wasn’t welcome to stay because it never came up. She wasn’t going to be someone who wanted more from him than he was interested in sharing. They had sex. She left after they had sex. He should be grateful, really. If she had met him six or seven years ago, she would have developed a huge one-sided crush that would have turned into bitter heartbreak and awkward guilt.

For a second she considered reminding him that being overly invested was her normal operating mode, and then she decided that it wasn't really the point.

She gave him a wary look. “Actually, I’m going to go clean up the mess in the kitchen.”

“I already took care of it,” he said. “Thirty seconds and a vacuum cleaner.”

“My clothes—“

“Hanging to dry in the guest bathroom. Go on, you’re impressed. I’m a miracle worker when it comes to cleaning up after you.”

“Snap,” she mimed. “Squared when you factor in shortest afterglow ever.”

“No, you are just getting pissy because you have to stay over. It was part of my evil plan when I lured you here—wait!”

“Right,” she rolled her eyes. “I’m freaking out about it,” she mocked, refusing to acknowledge that maybe she had been a little over-zealous in her effort to respect his boundaries before he felt the need to impose them. “I’m going to go call Lois, and let her know that I’m going to be staying in town.”

“Your phone is on my charger,” he said. 

His charger was on his desk, so she went out to the living room and made her call. Voice mail, still. Which meant that Lois was probably out with Clark. Chloe waited for the beep. “Hey, Lo. I’m working late, so I’m going to crash at the office. Text me if you want to get together for lunch tomorrow.”

She ended the call and checked her messages. Then she checked her alerts on her nifty new Watchtower app. It was still buggy, and she found it hard to resist the temptation to shake her phone like it was an Etch-A-Sketch to get rid of the clutter.

Finding nothing that needed looking into before morning, she considered logging into Ollie’s computer to start running down the credit cards companies that she needed to notify about her stolen purse, except that she wasn’t exactly sure which credit cards were in her purse. Her debit card, driver’s license, cash, spare change, yesterday’s unopened mail—which probably included at least one credit card bill, a tube of lipstick, a small brush. The purse itself was a nice one she had for a few years. Lana had talked her into it when they had been outlet shopping on the I-70. It was an eye catching mustard color with nice hardware, feet on the bottom, and a lot of great little compartments.

Sitting down at Ollie’s desk she found a pen and a blank pad he probably used for messages, and started making a list of things that she needed to do. She needed a driver’s license and her home address was still The Talon. That meant a trip out to Shelbyville. Cancel her credit cards. Maybe all of them. She was getting sloppy about keeping track of things like that. She could have the cards re-issued, but only the ones she really needed. 

The debit card, she drew a star next to. That was probably the one she needed to report right away, and she knew the 800 number for her bank, so she called that number, and waited for the prompts to select the option to report a stolen card. She was on the phone with customer service reporting her stolen card when Oliver set a stemless wine glass next to her, lingering to stroke the side of her neck as he read her list over her shoulder. Turning a little put her nose to navel with his lickable abdomen. 

“Would you like to have the card re-issued?” Marty, her customer service stolen card specialist asked, intruding on her private moment with Oliver’s abs.

“Please,” Chloe answered.

“You’ve confirmed your mailing address. We can send that by next day mail and it will arrive on Monday, or we can send it first class.”

“First class is fine,” Chloe said. She was going to have to go to the bank before the weekend to get cash. 

“Thanks. It will be one moment, Chloe,” Marty said. 

She looked up at Oliver. “I’m on hold,” she said quietly. 

“Cancelling credit cards?” he guessed.

She nodded. 

“Chloe? We are cancelling your Visa check plus card and sending a replacement card to your address on record. I got you a courtesy upgrade to next day service, but the order won’t start processing until morning, so expect your card on Monday. Your pin will be mailed separately, or you can take the card to any of our branch locations and ask them to re-set your PIN. You’ll need a photo ID to do that, or you can wait for the PIN in the mail. Do you have any questions?”

“No, and thanks for helping with this,” Chloe answered, idly thinking about re-issuing her own ID. She probably spent as much time in the DMV’s system as their programmers. 

After she hung up, she picked up the wine glass and took a sip. Oliver pulled her to her feet. “Do you need help with any of this?” he asked.

His mood swings were making her feel grateful for a reprieve, no matter how brief. She slid her arm around his waist, resting her head on his shoulder and closing her eyes for a moment. She was winding down fast. The wine was probably going to work like a charm to put her to sleep.

Oliver had taken a quick shower after she left the bathroom. His skin still felt a little damp to her. She breathed in the familiar way he smelled. “I need to know how to fix what I broke,” she said. “I don’t like fighting with you when I know that it isn’t resolving anything.”

“Okay,” he nodded. “I don’t like fighting with you either.”

For a long moment they didn’t say anything. He moved toward the couch and she went with him. 

“Let’s start with why you didn’t ask me for the money and tell me what you were using if for,” he suggested.

Chloe paused with her knee on the sofa. She had spent so much time thinking, planning, executing, worrying, and making adjustments. She had many reasons. Rationalizations, really. The moment when the seed was planted was clear to her. It was right after they found out that Lois had been to the future. After Clark announced that he was going to do what his father asked him to do and save Zod from himself. And it was a bunch of other moments.

She couldn’t say that telling him hadn’t always been in the back of her mind as an option. Whether it had or not, she hadn't acted on it. Her eyes shifted to him. He had one bare foot up on the edge of a stone topped coffee table. She started to tell him what it wasn’t, and stopped. She had to be sure before she said this.

She sank down to sit at a right angle to him.

He rubbed his jaw. “You asked me once what it was like when I was in Star City, and I wasn’t really sure what you wanted to hear.”

“I’m not trying to find the palatable truth,” she protested.

“I know,” he nodded. “But this is a piece of my life that is hard to understand. The only reason most people ever get into a room with me is that I have to make a decision about something that is important to them. My time is limited, and they have to make a case.” He looked at her to see if she was following him. 

“You want a simple answer,” she realized. 

He did a little back and forth thing with his head. “I think that there probably is a simple answer. You may not know what it is,” he cautioned. “But, just try something with me, okay?”

She frowned, nodding.

“Tell me exactly what you were going to say before you stopped,” he said.

That was easy. “It was never because I thought you would use it to hurt Clark,” she said. It contradicted the logic of keeping the weapons as secret as possible. Oliver had known how to hurt Clark last year, and had the means to do so, but the only time he exploited Clark’s weakness was to take him out of play, and he was careful about making sure that Clark was incapacitated in an out of the way place, and not harmed.

He smiled a little. “Okay,” he said softly. “Thank you. I needed to know that.”

She stared at him, feeling a prickle of uneasiness. She wasn’t sure where it was coming from. “But, generally, it’s always been a closely guarded secret—the effects of Kryptonite, that is. It is the kind of secret that is only shared for safety—“

His expression was awfully patient. She sighed. He knew that. 

“Victor knows.”

That surprised a flinch out of him. He had not expected that.

“I needed his contacts, and the . . . redundancy,” she shrugged. 

“Anyone else?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No.”

“You trust each other. Since you’ve been back, you’ve been on the same wavelength about most things,” she said. “I don’t agree with Clark. I think his plan is doomed to failure. I’m afraid that he won’t recognize it until it is too late.”

Sensing that there was a but coming, he waited. 

“These are his people. This is his plan. I will not undermine him, and I will not send you and our team into the field, if his plan fails, without giving you every possible advantage.”

“Maybe you should come to work at QI. That’s a strong rationale. I’m pretty sure I would have agreed with you,” he said.

Hearing him say that should have been reassuring. Or affirming. She agonized about where she was going to find the money. She spent insane amounts of time going over it again and again. She risked her relationships with the people at Isis and Lana.

“I thought that I was pretty clear about how I felt about Clark’s alien refugee naturalization project. I’m not totally unsympathetic to their situation. They were kidnapped and plunked down in a hostile world that they are ill-equipped to navigate.”

It was a more empathetic reading than she expected from him. She was not surprised that he agreed with her. He had backed Clark, but he hadn’t been any more enthusiastic about it than she had. 

He shook his head. “That’s why I think that they are dangerous.”

She took another sip of the wine, thinking about what he was saying. It didn’t change anything. She still believed that her decision to do this without consulting him was correct. “I’m sorry for where it leaves us. Because, I don’t expect you to shrug this off,” she said.

“Chloe?”

She met his gaze directly. 

“What you did put us on Tess Mercer’s radar,” he said. “There are things that are outside your experience. I could have gotten the money without tipping anyone off. You doing this would be like me deciding one Saturday morning to wipe out large portions of Watchtower and re-create it using out-of-date software and a tutorial I bought after watching a late night infomercial.”

Consternation flared in her eyes. “That bad?”

He shrugged. “Want me to sugar coat it? Mercy is not someone to take lightly,” he warned. “You need to start believing that she’s smarter than you, because she is. She’s ruthless, and she believes in what she is doing every bit as much as you do.”

Underestimating Tess was probably a fair critique, Chloe decided as she sipped her wine. “What are you going to do?”

Another shrug. “Fix it. Find a way to distract her—so, piss her off. I’m pretty good at that,” he said ruefully. “She’s got a few pet projects that I can go after just to force her to defend them,” he sounded almost fond of the prospect of boardroom combat with Tess.

He was talking like this was something that they were going to get past, and deep down, Chloe always suspected that it would go something like that. Worst case scenario? She’d be in the penalty box until it died down, or was forgotten, and life would go on. Like it always did.

“I’ve been doing some thinking too,” he said. “Just for the purposes of getting everything out there,” he qualified. “It occurred to me that you set this into motion before anything happened between us.”

She nodded. “As soon as I knew what happened to Lois,” she confirmed quietly. There was something else she started to say, but she kept it back.

“Right,” he had worked that out. “So . . . here’s the thing that is kind of eating at me. Going back to that night? You are having a bad day, I’m throwing myself out there for some stress relief and fun. How much of your bad day had to do with embezzling a small fortune from my company?—and there is a follow-up.”

Chloe shook her head. “I—“she made a face. “God, that was such a weird couple of days,” she said. “I had a date with a twelve year old,” her nose wrinkled at the ick factor. “He didn’t look like a twelve year old. He looked like—it doesn’t matter. It was just—there was no filter on the un-fun-ness zone that I had become.”

“So, when I put myself out there as someone to have some meaningless fun with . . .” he rubbed his chest. “You weren’t thinking—or feeling—pressured to—“

Her eyes widened, then narrowed. “Pre-emptively placate you with sex?” 

“That’s a no,” he interpreted, settling for an eye roll. “What about just feeling guilty enough to tip the balance?”

She looked at him like he had sprouted a second head. “There are moments when I get glimpses of the weird crap in your head, and I think: wow. _Issues_.”

That was also unenlightening. “Yeah, back at you, baby. Just answer the question.”

“I’m not that complicated, Ollie. I went on a date with a twelve year old. The unexpected Oliver Queen upgrade offer was the equivalent of winning the lottery with bonus points for flattery. If it had happened when I was fifteen and dumped at my first dance by Clark, I’d probably be raising your secret love child, and not really resenting you for it, too much,” she speculated giving him an exasperated look. 

He didn’t look completely convinced. 

Smirking, she handed him her glass and proceeded to climb into his lap, straddling his thighs. “Look at me,” she ordered, placing her hands on either side of his face.

“Wow,” he said softly. “You’re blushing.” 

“Shut up,” she muttered. “Remember that night on the roof of the Daily Planet when you swooped in late,” she couldn’t let that go unmentioned, “to save me?”

He nodded, smiling a little. “I think we already covered this. Me and my short-lived crush on you and your shoe. Good times,” he was curious about where this was going.

“Yeah, _late_ ,” she reminded him, “but, wow. With the skyline behind you, and the full stop hotness of, well, _you_ . . .”

He grinned. “We _were_ having a moment. I knew it!”

“The only thing that saved me from developing a huge crush was—“

“I wasn’t late,” he inserted, chuckling. “And you were _so_ into me!”

“I was going to say that Dinah was just the tiniest bit more bad ass, but—“

“Hah. Very funny.”

“So, maybe there was a little tiny crush.”

“Yeah? You played it cool, Chloe.”

She shrugged. “You were my paying Sidekick gig. I had to be professional,” she pointed out. “So, I didn’t run out, buy a green vibrator and name it after you, because that would have been—“ 

“Awesome!”

“—weird.”

“If I had only known, you would have gotten that for your birthday,” he teased.

She was doing some kind of thing with her fingers like they were calipers and she was taking very careful measurements of his shoulders and upper arms. 

“What’s our love child’s name?” he prompted since he was having fun teasing her.

“Erin or Will.” 

“Erin is okay,” he said, “But little Willie Queen is going to be wishing his fifteen year old high school drop-out Mom had been more on the ball.”

She shook her head. “Will Sullivan,” she corrected. 

“Sure,” he said. “You’re just leading your own little revolution, there Chloe,” he mocked. “So . . . let’s move on to the ‘ _hotness that is me_ ’,” he quoted with relish. “What is it about— _Green Arrow_ —that puts a slick in Chloe Sullivan’s panties?”

The turn of phrase made her blink a couple of times. “Wow,” she managed.

“You can tell me. Is it my washboard abs? My snappy repartee? I work on that in the morning when I’m brushing my teeth. I run through all of my unused comebacks and smack down lines, but timing is everything in the witty—“

She snorted rudely.

“Don’t hate on me because I’m a hero,” he chided. “I’m out there, looking like a throwback 1970s rock star, making non-lethal use of lethal weapons, being this hot, and lightning fast with the timely quip—bonus points for mocking the bad guys—while keeping the streets safe. It’s not as easy as it looks.”

The ‘throwback 1970’s rock star’ bit had her giggling uncontrollably. 

He looked at her wineglass, and shook his head. “Oh my God, you’re giggling and blushing,” he laughed at her. “Are you catching a buzz on a thimbleful of wine, or is it me?” he wound a lock of her hair around his finger. “I guess that I’m like champagne,” he found her smiling back. ”You don’t realize that you are over the limit until you are telling me about your green vibrator, your secret crush, and the names you picked for our kids.”

“I’m not drunk. I’m exhausted,” she said sadly. “I’m too tired to get up to go to bed,” she hinted.

He cracked up. “Seriously? That’s the best you’ve got?” He shook his head. “Baby, you say, ’I’m drunk, I want to be on top’ and you’re in bed soooo fast that you’d think Impulse was here for a threesome.”

“And when I fall asleep?”

He put the glass on the coffee table and picked her up. “If I can’t keep you from falling asleep, then there’s always morning sex, which we haven’t had in months,” he pointed out. “If you wake up first, go brush your teeth, and then you should get right on that. With me.”

“Oh, you are hilarious,” she grumbled. “You’ll be having morning sex with your imagination, and I’ll be in line to get my driver’s license replaced.”

“How are you going to get there?”

“I thought I’d take the bus,” she rested her head against his shoulder. “I hope that you and your hand will be happy together.”

He grunted. “You don’t have to have a driver’s license to drive. The car will work without it.”

“Keys were in my purse,” she explained as he brought her to the rumpled bed for a smooth landing. 

“Maybe you’ll get lucky and they’ll steal your car,” he muttered. “Take one of mine,” he offered, kissing her forehead. “What else do you need?”

“A vacation.” 

Chloe scooted over to make room for him. He spooned around her, pulling the sheet and blanket over them.

She brought her hand up to gingerly press against her left eye. Ever since Brainiac had taken up residence, her left eye throbbed when she was tired. Actually, it was more like ever since Brainiac had been extracted from her by being magnetically removed _through her pores_ , but she didn’t want to seem ungrateful for the Legion’s hastily put together intervention.

“Did you get a passport?”

A what? She started to answer, but a yawn took over. “N-uh-uh,” she managed to get out with a firm shake of her head.

“Hm,” he kissed her head again. “Go to sleep.”

“Why do I need a passport?” she wanted to know.

“Vacation?” he reminded her, sliding his hand under the t-shirt she was wearing while she got the pillow turned just right and wiggled into a more comfortable position.

She started giggling again. “The _Ozarks_ are not in another country, Oliver.”

“Huh?” he was baffled. He brightened. “What with you robbing me, I forgot all about our mini-break weekend. That’s . . . Friday?”

That wasn’t what he was thinking about. He was thinking about the gold of her hair against limitless blue skies, washing the tired sadness of the last year that clung to her away in the filter of white sand beaches, and seeing the capacity for wonder and joy restored to her. He was thinking about the unmentionable reason that she had done this, and how when she was ready to face it, he wanted her to be somewhere that they couldn’t escape.

His eyes stung and his chest ached. What the hell was happening to him?

“Ollie?”

“Hmm?”

She was quiet for a moment. “I trust you and Clark to get on the same page and get things done,” she said. “I used to believe that things would turn out right because we would make the right decision, and do the right thing, at the right time, but . . . now that I know that isn’t true . . . this is what I do. This is all I have to offer.”

There was so much unsaid in her stillness, and the quiet, almost hollow tone of her voice. 

If everything went to hell, Chloe had a back-up plan to arm the villagers with pitchforks. The fact that she wasn’t the kind of person who would die waiting for him to save her was what made her the right person for . . . Watchtower. 

“It’s a good thing that you’ve got our back,” he said, watching her eyelids droop. A small, resigned smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. 

She was asleep in minutes, and he was left to wonder if Chloe suspected that the first place he went to with her was the absolute worst interpretation of her intentions. It was no coincidence that she chose to bring Victor in on her plan. Victor had missed most of the stuff that had happened last year, and his reaction had been more ‘wait and see’ than the rest of them. 

He was sure that Chloe didn’t ask him for the money because she rated her chances of getting his support as unacceptably low. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him with access to weapons that could harm Clark. She didn’t trust him to back her up.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Link to banner: http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/bkwurm1/12629216/20847/20847_900.jpg

After dinner on Wednesday, Oliver and Chloe returned to Watchtower with Emil. Victor conferenced in from California, and the four of them war gamed the Kandorian weapon stockpile. Victor took the lead on deployment and storage. Emil suggested that they add some decoy sites. Oliver refined the inventory orders for each container. 

They talked about next steps for Watchtower. Bart was coming in on Friday to help Jonn cover the city since Clark was also going out of town. 

Relieved of the burden of curating their failsafe plan, Chloe felt a huge weight shift into a more manageable burden. She went to lunch with Lois, and tagged along as Lois shopped for her mystery date weekend. 

“Why don’t you call Eric Maclean?” Lois suggested that night while she was packing her bags.

Chloe was only half-listening to her. She mentally packing her own bag for her own weekend. “Who?”

“Cute, blond, hottie with commitment issues? Eric Maclean. Recently divorced? He’s got rebound written all over him.”

Chloe caught on. “I think that crush has sailed,” she said.

“He was asking about you,” Lois hinted.

Chloe tilted her head. “That’s nice. Was I asking about him?”

Lois scowled at her. “No, but—“

Chloe’s eyebrows rose and her expression cooled. “Lois,” she hit just the right note of ‘stop right there’. 

“Are you going to do something sad and lonely like sit around here all weekend watching re-runs?” Lois challenged.

Chloe shrugged. “Probably not,” she said, laughing. “And why is that sad and lonely? I think it sounds like a welcome relief.”

“Are you going to call Eric Maclean?”

Chloe’s nose wrinkled. “No,” she shook her head, giving Lois a warning look. “Leave it alone, Lois.”

“There are a lot of really great guys out there,” Lois began, and then backed off. “I’m just saying. I want you to be happy.”

Chloe sat on her bed, picking at the bedspread. “If that’s supposed to be my goal,” she sounded less than convinced that it was, “then, I need to figure out how to do that and not expect someone to be responsible for making me happy. I think that was a problem Jimmy and I had,” she shrugged. “He was fun and I loved being with him, but when things weren’t fun? We didn’t work, Lois. I spent the whole time he was in the hospital acting like the walk-on character of the patient’s wife.”

“Oh, Chloe,” Lois dropped the shirt she was folding, sitting on the opposite end of the bed. “No!” she shook her head. “It wasn’t you.”

“Part of it was me, Lois,” she said. “I made mistakes. When I came back from Black Creek, Jimmy wanted to take back his proposal. He thought we weren’t ready,” she nodded. “He was right. We were not ready. For most people, for better or worse is mostly theoretical until something catastrophic happens.”

“So, what does that mean?” Lois asked.

Chloe smiled. “It means that I love you, too, and I’m happy for you, and I’m okay. And if I need help getting a date, I’ll let you know?”

“Fine,” Lois grumped.

 

“Does this change things?” Chloe asked Oliver when they were on the way back to Metropolis on Sunday afternoon. 

His eyes left the road to look over at her. She sounded pensive. 

“Does it change things that the number of people who know about us has expanded to include Lois and Clark?” he asked. 

“Us?” she questioned, and then shook her head. “Okay. There is an _us_. There was an us, deliberately undefined, that existed before anyone noticed. Or, you volunteered the information. Or, we got caught sneaking around.”

“Wow. There is an _us_?” he marveled. “Maybe we should start writing all of this down before it gets complicated. Next, you are going to want closet space and a drawer.”

She looked over at him. “Is that an offer, or are you making fun of me?”

“Hm,” he shook his head. “Why don’t come home with me tonight and after you freak out about the fireplace I had built in the bedroom, we can circle back to closet space.”

“The—what are you talking about?” she asked.

“I had a fireplace put in,” he looked over at her. 

“For me?”

He looked tempted to deny it, but let out an aggravated sigh. “Yes, Chloe. I know that you enjoy a nice fire, so I had a fire place installed in my bedroom.”

“For me?” she repeated.

“Mostly,” he admitted. 

Her mouth opened and shut a couple of times. 

“Wow. Speechless? Really?”

“It’s bigger than a spoon,” she said. “Give me a second.”

She unfastened her seat belt, getting up on her knees to lean over the console between the front seats to pull her laptop out of her bag. 

“What are you doing?”

She gave him a sunny smile. “We need a rug that won’t give anyone rug burn.” 

He couldn’t argue with that. 

 

“I’ve got a bone to pick with you, Ollie,” Lois said as she barged into his office on Monday morning.

“There is a queue forming for that, outside,” Tess told her.

“Cute,” Oliver said. “I’m dealing with it, Mercy. “And you’ve got your own issues with the board.”

The layers to unravel in Chloe’s embezzlement scams were giving him a headache. The initial business where she scooped up a half a million dollars was straightforward. The way she managed to weave her way deep inside their business processes to bury a couple of decimal points of a difference in how cost was recovered, and then make it look like it was an ordinary cost allocation, and then bury her tracks by making it appear that the hack came from outside the country, was scarily brilliant. So far, no one had caught on to the second embezzlement. 

She gave him a sour look and shrugged. “Fine,” she spun on her heel, smirking at Lois. “He’s all yours.”

Oliver gave Lois a small shake of his head, waiting until his door closed behind Tess. “Not a good day for more drama, Lois,” he warned her.

“Tough,” Lois snorted. “What the hell are you doing with my cousin? No strings? No expectations? No commitments? Wrap your little blond head around this, buster. No _way_ is my favorite cousin going to be a convenient pit stop on the Oliver Queen express.”

One of the things that he loved about Lois was this: her steadfast love and loyalty, usually expressed without a filter when it came to Chloe. Before he ever met Chloe, he knew exactly who she was, and how responsible Lois felt when it came to looking out for her cousin.

He was only a little surprised to discover that Chloe wasn’t the helpless little fluffy kitten that Lois seemed to mistake her for when she was in big cousin mode.

“Agreed,” Oliver said. “Anything else we need to cover?”

Lois tilted her head to one side, “Agreed?” she repeated.

“You know that wacky thing that we do where we tell each other how we feel about other people before we’ve told them?” Oliver prompted. “Yeah, we aren’t doing that. I’m not talking to you about Chloe.”

“What are you saying?”

“Leave it alone.”

Lois started to smile. “So . . . this is serious?”

Oliver’s eyebrows rose in a silent ‘what do you think’ challenge. 

Lois smile was a little giddy. Oliver thought if he squinted, he might just see carton hearts spinning around her ponytailed head. 

“Awesome!” she said in a frighteningly chirpy way. “Because I think that you and Chloe?” she spread her hands wide. “Made of win!” Lois’ hands clenched in a double fist pump. 

That’s cute. She’s not punching me in the head, Oliver thought. He backed up a step anyway.

“It’s going to be great. We can go on double dates.”

It was _really_ cute. Lois wanted to be his wingman. Oliver did not see that coming. He shook his head, chuckling at her enthusiasm. It was nice that someone was on his side. 

“Bonus: picture what your kids are going to look like.”

That made him laugh. He was not freaking out because he refused to freak out or fantasize about having kids with a woman who had only grudgingly allowed that they were an ‘us’. Chloe was consistent on that point. Sex, yes. Friendship, yes. Relationship—ewwww! She managed to make it funny, insulting, sexy, and earnest all at the same time. She was very committed to her no-commitment stance. Anyway, it was obvious that they would have adorable little blond kids. His back-up career plan was underwear model, and Chloe was adorkably gorgeous. 

“What’s the plan? How do I help?” she asked.

Whoa! “Uh . . . you _don’t_ ,” he insisted. “I’ve got it. I know what I’m doing.” 

For a long moment Lois stared at him, and then slowly. Slowly, she worked it out. Her fingers covered her lips in a gesture that was surprisingly demure for Lois. She was hiding a grin that she couldn’t quite contain. 

She was _enjoying_ this.

Oliver narrowed his eyes. Did he break her heart cheating on her with a hostess/cocktail server and expect her to get over it? ‘No. I didn’t,’ he thought, sourly. It was a miracle Tess didn’t just kill him when he swanned back in her life to rescue her from being bitter.

There was no dumping with Lois. He was tempted to take back claiming that breaking up with her was the moment he was going to regret for the rest of his life. In retrospect, he was pretty sure that he overstated. A lot. 

“Ollie? Are you telling me that _Chloe_ is the one who is keeping things casual?”

This was exactly what he didn’t need on top of the weekend vacation crashed by Lois, Clark, and a supernatural visitation at the world’s most craptastic B&B. 

“She’s . . .” he hated how much he wanted to talk about this. Except not with Lois. She would undiplomatically run off to tell Chloe—with the best intentions—but probably without achieving her intended goal. “Leave it alone, Lois. She’s working through stuff right now—“

Lois rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on, Oliver! She probably thinks that you’ll bail on her if it gets serious,” she said, demonstrating once again how little she thought of his finer feelings. 

“Thanks a lot,” he snapped. “If I’m a soup spoon, you my friend are a tea spoon, dating Clark and fangirling The Blur—have any editors remarked on your ability to write a news piece that actually reads breathless?”

It was touch and go there for a moment. She looked really tempted to deck him.

Then she got right in his face, “Chloe deserves someone who is willing to put themselves out there and fight for her.”

Oh . . . 

Oliver backed down when he realized that it wasn’t about despicably shallow him after all. Lois didn’t really trust romance. It might as well be magic or alien possession. She called Valentine’s Day V-day. She mocked greeting cards. Grand gesture apology flowers to Lois were a projectile. 

Lois was more show than tell. 

This was about Chloe. It didn’t take a genius to intuit that Lois was already formulating a full court press of romantic gestures. 

He got it. Lois loved Chloe, and she wanted Chloe to get the maximum fairy tale romance. Once upon a time not too long ago, sweet, lame romantic gestures, even poorly executed sweet, lame romantic gestures, probably would have got the job done. Oliver could almost see Lois adding up how much he has to deliver on that score. She had the repressed frustration of watching Chloe sell herself short and a childhood full of shared romantic aspirations to draw on. Once upon a time the girl he was doing on the side was a little girl with big dreams, and Lois actually knew that little girl. 

Oliver doesn’t know that version of Chloe. Miniature-size Chloe may be buried beyond recall by the grown up version. He hasn’t even seen her adorable pictures. Chloe’s mother was catatonic and her father left the area in witness protection and he doesn’t visit. The few times Oliver has spoken to Gabe have been under the worst possible circumstances.

From what he remembered about the wedding Doomsday crashed, the wedding in the Kent’s barn was a teen-Chloe fantasy that Lois didn’t completely approve of for her cousin. Lois was loyal like that. Oliver was almost afraid to know what Chloe thought was romantic before romance became settling, and then devolved into something she wanted to quarantine. A small smile touched his lips as he imagined pint sized Chloe arguing the merits of Mr. Darcy versus Lois’s crush on 80’s hair band icon, Brett Michaels. 

He knows a few things that he wants. Selfishly. Just for him. 

Yesterday morning, when he walked into their B&B room from the bathroom, Chloe was still in bed, with her arm around the pillow he had used, and her eyes half closed as she dozed. She had the softest, sweetest smile on her face as she turned her head and said a sleepy good morning. 

He wanted that, times every day. 

The other night, before he stomped all over their evening with a stupidly perfunctory gift, they had a date. They went out to dinner, like a normal couple, and had a meal memorable only because they were enjoying it together, and there was just a tiny bit too much to drink for her. Then, they were heading back to their room to do what they do better than Oliver has ever had. 

That was not an exaggeration. At first, he thought it was just a happy accident. She was cute, and fun to hang out with. They never ran out of stuff to talk about, right? Awesome sex was predictable. He _had_ predicted it. 

Chloe’s theory that first time sex with anyone was bound to be a little underwhelming? True. As someone who had a lot more first times than her, Oliver would say that she got that right. First times aren’t that great. You have to invest a little work in getting to the good stuff, and since he was freakishly cost effective and efficient when it came to investing in a project, it took a lot to get him excited about coming back for more.

With her, those calculations simply never applied. It was fantastic, but if it wasn’t that it wouldn’t have made the least difference to him. 

She just does it for him, like no one else. Best ever. It’s not about any one thing. It isn’t obvious. Tess and Lois’s attractions were more clear cut. Tess had the damsel in distress bit going and once upon a time, she was heartbreakingly and earnestly adoring. Lois was so brash and fun to hang with. Lois was smart. Tess was smarter than Chloe—by any way you could think of measuring it. 

Chloe’s just had that extra something. Oliver thought that it was her heart. That she could steal herself to play Agony Aunt to Clark over Lana, and still love them so fiercely despite being in love with Clark _while she was still a teenager_ was pretty damned remarkable.

When Oliver was a teenager, he was a little bastard to just about everyone except the handful of people who were his friends, and by _friends_ , he meant minions. If this were Harry Potter, teenage Oliver Quenn would be Draco Malfoy, and his buddies? Crabbe and Goyle. 

Getting back to his selfish stuff? Oliver wanted more dates. He wanted them, dressed up and having a fantastic meal in a jewel box of a restaurant, just for the pleasure of seeing her that way. He wanted weekends in the country, just the two of them, at a county fair, or a flea market. He wanted to take her with him the next time he went to Europe, or Asia, or home to Star City. He wanted to walk on the beach barefoot with her. He wanted to sleep beside her and know that he didn’t want to be anywhere else. He wanted all of these things without reservation, and he wanted her to know that he wanted them, and know that it was what _they brought out of each other_ that made the idea that they were an ‘us’ important.

At the risk of sounding like an arrogant jackass, he wanted to be that to her. He wanted to help her be the best possible version of herself that she could be, because that’s what she did for him. 

Lois wanted Chloe to be happy and to be loved the way she deserved.

He wanted that too. 

Lois’s expression changed. She was not stupid or insensitive. “Ollie,” she said, her tone shifting to compassion.

He had to turn away, unable to bear the look on her face. Lois might be almost ridiculously self-involved, but when she was feeling your pain, it was written all over her suddenly perceptive and too empathetic face. 

He felt like he was having an out of body moment. He could see himself. He could see his reflection in the glass wall behind his desk. While he watched, the still functional part of him shook his stupid head. 

_‘Note to Carter Hall: thanks a lot, man. I was perfectly fine with my head stuck in the sand. Seriously, next time, just sucker punch me unconscious,’_ Oliver thought.

“You are right,” the cut out version of Oliver staring at his reflection says. He sounded surprisingly clinical about it. 

“Yeah, but you’re fighting _Chloe_ for Chloe.” 

She was making a face that was about reminding him that Chloe was worth it. “She’s kind of stubborn, and you—“

“Whoa,” he stopped her.

It was not something he was ready to say aloud. He has seen guys in the same spot: crazy about a girl who is a little crazy herself, or selfish, or for whatever reason, oblivious. And that’s the stark truth. Chloe didn’t see him. The whole time that she was telling him that the reason she fell out of love with Clark was that he didn’t see her; Oliver was stuck in the bittersweet realization that he was the one who wasn’t seen by Chloe. 

He didn’t begrudge her that. He wasn’t mad at her for using him as her transitional relationship. It’s exactly what he _invited_ her to do. It was why there is a disputed ‘us’ in the first place.

“You know what? I’m not saying how I feel about her until she’s ready to be the first to hear it,” he said with the perfect sincerity of a man who could sell a very broken geothermal plant with a fabulous vacation home in a swamp as sweetener, which just happened to be on his to-do list for the day.

Lois needed to hear this. She and Clark had a tendency to dump their problems in Chloe’s lap. She listened and she let them work it out on their own. They need to start taking notes on how to be a good friend from their mutual best friend. 

“Chloe has been the repository for everyone’s secrets and deep feelings, and _this_ —what we are, what we could be, and what we become, it belongs to _her_. I don’t want to know about what you think she feels, Lois. I hope she tells you. I hope you listen, without interfering. The way she does for you.”

Because what Lois knows? Not a lot in the grand scheme of things. 

When he turned back to Lois, he could tell that she was surprised. He had not said what she expected, or wanted, to hear. She was chewing on the inside of her cheek. 

It occurred to him that she was a probably offended. 

When she looked up, he realized that she was a little unsettled. Huh. He might have laid it on a little thick. “Lois—“

She shook her head, negating whatever he was about to say to soften the message. “We’re going to argue,” she said suddenly, smiling a little, tearing up a little. She sniffed and shook off the reaction. “I’m a little bit in love with the idea that you’ve got Chloe’s back.”

Okay . . . that was not what Oliver expected. “So, we’re good?”

She nodded, and gave him that smile. The smile that said: get it done, or else, mister. 

He still thought it was a toss-up whether or not she was going to sucker punch him, but it was starting to look like he was going to make it to his ten o’clock without having to explain a black eye.

“Hate to kick you out, but I have work to do,” he told her, ushering her to the door.

At the door, Lois launched herself at him to hug him. It felt like she was going for a choke hold. 

It tightened when Mia breezed in, giving Lois a disdainful look. “Psycho.”

Lois tipped her head back to look Oliver in the eye. “Break my cousin’s heart, and I’ll feed you your testicles with a grapefruit spoon.”

“Hey, ease up there, Legs,” Oliver wheezed while breaking Lois’ hold. “So, uh, yeah! So, that double date thing?” he shook his head. “You may have to take that off the table to get our girl out of the closet.”

Lois gave him a bratty-McBitch smile for his troubles, and Oliver laughed. He was still kind of crazy about Lois. 

The stingy ‘friendly’ slap to his cheek. That, he could have lived without. “Be careful out there, Ollie.”

He shoved her out the door and made sure it closed behind her before turning around. Mia nearly took his head off with her foot. 

“What the hell?” he was tired of this. “This is a place of business. I work here.”

“Are you back with her?” Mia asked, pissed off.

“No,” Oliver frowned at her. She looked angry, but otherwise okay. “Do I need to rewind ‘what the hell, Mia?’”

“Where have you been?” she asked. “You were out of town, but then you just dropped off the grid.”

“Are you checking up on me?” 

Without a hint of hesitation, Mia owned it. “Oh, yeah,” she said, nodding vigorously. “If you don’t want me to know where you are, chances are good that you are doing something stupid, dangerous, or unhealthy. Somebody has to watch out for you.”

He sighed, patting his chest. “I’m feeling that. The nice part about how you care about me. I’m skipping over the part where I come off like an asshat.”

Mia rolled her eyes. “I’m stealing that back now. It’s a couple of years old, and you are finding too many ways to use it.”

Oliver grunted out a wishy-washy agreement. He liked asshat. It was efficient and it sounded funny. 

“Okay. Well, I’m good. Safe and sound, or whatever—“

“Why was Psycho here?” Mia asked.

“Lois . . . is a little rude and occasionally violent, but not psychotic. Just saying. You know what? You don’t have to get along with her, but she packs a mean left hook.”

“Noted,” Mia drawled, throwing herself down on the couch. “So, here is the deal-io,” she made a rolling hand gesture to let Oliver know that her polite interest in his life had concluded. She pointed at herself. 

It was hard to keep from laughing. “Right. Moving on to important stuff,” he interpreted.

He got a smile and an envelope from the county school board presented with a flourish. 

“It’s no big deal,” she began, as he pulled out the letter welcoming Mia Dearden to the high school diversion program with the goal of getting her prepared to take the general equivalency degree.

“It’s a very big deal,” he corrected. 

It was time Mia met Chloe. 

He laughed at the thought of taking Mia back to school shopping without Chloe. He hugged Mia. “I have a busy day, but come by tonight? We’ll have dinner. There is someone I want to introduce you to.”

 

They had to postpone a day because AC needed Chloe’s help coordinating a search and rescue mission in the Caribbean. Chloe arrived with a couple of bags of food and a homemade chocolate cake. Mia and Chloe had met once before, the night that Vortigen hunted Mia in the maze. Clark brought Mia to Chloe while Oliver dealt with the police and his former mentor. He thought they would get along, and the only hiccup occurred when Mia realized that Chloe was Lois’s cousin. 

She waited until Chloe was in the kitchen making coffee and cutting the cake to give him a hard time about that.

“Don’t you dare let Psycho mess this up for you,” she warned. 

Oliver leaned across the table. “Pick a new nickname. Chloe loves her cousin.”

Chloe was familiar with the diversion program from her work with Isis clients. She got her laptop out and started showing Mia how to navigate the requirements. “The object of diversion is to get you prepared for the GED exam, but also to get you there quickly so that you can move on to your next goal,” Chloe explained. “If you want to go to college, you may be able to enroll at Met U at the same time. Met U has a network of community colleges that offer courses that you don’t have to have a GED or high school diploma to take. You earn credits toward your GED requirements and credits for college at the same time.”

“What if I don’t know what I want to do,” Mia asked.

Chloe tilted her head. “You’ll have a counselor assigned to you, but there are some vocation assessment tests that you can sign up for. It can help narrow things down. I had a friend who wanted to be an artist. That’s a very expensive education, and she wasn’t sure how she would be able to make a living, so . . .” Chloe made a face. “You might have to compromise a little, or have a fall back plan. And, keep in mind that very few people end up doing what they dreamed of doing when they were eighteen.”

Oliver let them geek out together over the diversion program’s on-line classes. When it didn’t appear that they were going to get bored with that soon, he frowned at the two of them.

“Back to school shopping?” he prompted, eying Chloe. “I figured you’d be all for fondling lined notebook paper and extolling the merits of college ruled.”

“Paper?” Chloe’s nose wrinkled. “Don’t be ridiculous. She needs a good laptop, Ollie.”

Mia cracked up. “Yeah,” she taunted. “Next you are going to be talking up pencil boxes.”

Oliver tried not to look offended. “You can’t tell me that the smell of a freshly sharpened pencil doesn’t take you to your happy place.”

Chloe’s smile broke free. “That is pretty amazing,” she said, checking her watch. “Let’s go shopping.” 

 

On Wednesday, the cream-colored flokati rug Chloe ordered arrived. Chloe’s reaction to the actual fireplace, as opposed to her visible effort not to over-react to the hypothetical fireplace, was anti-climactic. His new fireplace feature wall was awesome. The fireplace was between two windows. The contractor had tiled the wall in blue-grey slate around the curving stainless steel and tempered glass of the fireplace. It was finished with a black quartz hearth to give the space definition. 

Her reaction was a head tilt, and then she just shook her head, hugged him, and patted his back. 

The fireplace had been inspected and the gas was connected. After they unrolled the rug, Oliver gave it a skeptical look, while Chloe kicked off her shoes to lie down on it. She ran her hands over the pile. 

“The bed is five feet away,” he pointed out as he stretched out beside her. 

“True,” she agreed, getting up to find the remote to the fireplace to turn it on. Leaving the remote on the dresser, she unfastened her jeans and shimmied out of them. 

He loved it when she started flinging her clothes off. She was ahead of him when she straddled his lap, leaving him with his pants unbuttoned but still on. The rug was like a powder puff.

“Is it me, or is this going to be like having sex on Santa’s beard?”

She was still laughing while he rolled her over so he could get his pants off. 

Later, when they were lying in an exhausted tangle, she finally said something nice about his fireplace. “Oh, look! The granite has little flecks in it.”

“What’s wrong with the fireplace? You hate it.”

“No, I don’t,” she rolled over to rest her chin on his chest. “It’s . . . it surprised me. It’s very shiny. Did you call and order something to go with your BMW?”

“Smart ass,” he grumbled. “Your rug is shedding. There are little bits of it sticking to me, which isn’t helping with the idea that we had sex on Santa’s beard. I’m probably going to have weird dreams about this.”

“Did I ruin Christmas for you?” she teased.

“Check back with me in January?”

Combing his fingers through her hair, he found himself trying to figure out what it was about her that just did it for him. Was there is some secret formula to the way she’s put together, or the combination of how it felt when he was inside her? Did it have something with the way she conveys what she’s feeling. He didn’t’ remember when he started thinking way too much about her eyes and the way her hair looked better with his fingers in it, and how perfect she looks when she’s coasting to a long, slow, deliciously decadent orgasm. 

Maybe they were just oddly gifted with awesome body mechanics and parts that just fit together really well. 

He opened his eyes when he sensed that she was looking down at him. “Shower?” she suggested.

He smiled, and nodded, pulling her down for a long, slow kiss.

“What was that for?”

“I like the bed better. A shower would be good, but no matter what, you are my ‘just right’,” he murmured. 

“Like the Three Bears?”

“Mm-hm,” he wound one of her curls around his finger. 

A giggle slipped out. 

He gave her a wounded look, and he knew it was just going to egg her on. “You think that’s funny, Goldilocks?” he asked, tickling her.

She laughed until she was red faced and wheezing because she couldn’t breathe. 

 

It was like something out of a bad sit-com, Oliver decided. He got a 911 text from Lois to get to Smallville and came charging into domestic drama like a complete amateur.

“So, you are Oliver Queen?” General Sam Lane said. He was wearing battle dress in Chloe and Lois’s living room. 

Oliver heaved an inward sigh. He wore green leather while patrolling the city at night. Spot him twenty years and his own kids to worry about, and Oliver could see himself armored up for battle. Whatever. He wasn’t going to judge . . . much. 

He pasted on a welcoming grin. He was pretty sure that it was the reason that QI risk management wanted to buy insurance for his face. He might have put it into the suggestion box just for fun.

“General Lane? It’s nice to meet you, sir.”

Chloe was behind the kitchen island looking windblown, surprised, and wide-eyed in a way that he found adorable. She was wearing a cute little cap sleeved top with a blue and gold paisley pattern and jeans. She hurried around the island to intercept them.

“Uncle Sam is here with my Dad,” she said with a slightly strained smile. “Isn’t that great, Ollie?”

He raised his eyebrows, nodding, not exactly sure what response she was trying to get from him.

“According to my Lois, you are dating our Chloe,” General Lane said.

While Oliver tried not to laugh— _my_ Lois, _our_ Chloe? Seriously? Was there a Sullivan-Lane flag for that? Or a t-shirt with a team logo? He was positive that there wasn’t a tattoo. He had checked. Chloe’s hands flattened on his chest. “I need to talk to you, _now_ ,” she said, pushing to get him to back out of her apartment.

He rolled his eyes. “Fine. Okay. Yeah,” he agreed, making it sound like he was humoring her. “Where is your Dad? I’d really like to meet him—“

“Oliver,” Chloe huffed.

He smirked at her. “We’re going to be right out here,” he told General Lane as Chloe dragged him into the dimly lit hall outside her apartment.

“Wow!” he gestured to the general through the door. “He’s in uniform,” he marveled. “Is ‘dating’ you official business? Did he bring a tank? Or, did he just repel in from a Black Hawk?”

“Oliver!” she moaned. “This isn’t funny.”

“It’s a little funny,” he allowed. “Lois ratted you out,” he noted, tilting his head. “Aside from Tess, you don’t see a lot of people dress up in camouflage, packing an attitude for arsenal. It’s fun at family dinners, I’ll bet.”

“This is a disaster,” Chloe groaned.

“Perfect. We’re good at disaster,” he pointed out. “Are we going with boyfriend, or have you decided to tell the General and your Dad that you use me for sex?” He held up one hand. “I swear I will buy you a satellite and name it after you if you tell your Dad that I’m your steady bit on the side.”

She got a funny look on her face. “An active satellite in synchronous orbit?”

He grinned. “You are so _fucking_ hot right now,” he said admiringly. “I’m mentally retrieving a bottle of champagne so we can christen that bad girl The Chloeliscious.” 

She shook off the offer. “This is Defcon 2. Be serious!”

“Dead serious, baby,” he drawled, backing her up to the curving wall on the landing outside of her apartment. “Tell Daddy the dirty, awful truth,” he teased as he lowered his mouth to meet hers in a kiss.

She clutched the open front of his leather jacket, and for a few seconds she was into the kiss. Her hand crept up to his neck. 

Unfortunately, her giant panic-stricken brain got in the way. He could tell that she wasn’t connecting with the kiss. He eased off with a final, lingering bite of her lower lip. He cradled the nape of her neck, resting his forehead against hers, waiting patiently for her to open her eyes and stop hiding from him. At this distance, her eyes were drenched with enough anxiety laced with unhappiness that he felt it like it belonged to him too. 

“Hey,” he said, relenting. “I’m what you need me to be for this,” he offered, as if that was something new for them. 

“Ollie . . .”

He closed his eyes, taking a deep, calming breath. “Rebound boyfriend? I’d like to be more, but I’m ruefully aware that you’ll probably dump me in the not so distant future?” he suggested, cupping her cheek and running his thumb over the mink-like softness of her eyebrow. 

“Is that even believable?” she retorted. “I don’t want my sanity or intelligence to become the topic of dinner table conversation at Thanksgiving for years to come,” she protested.

He kissed the corner of her mouth, “You are so pretty when you dish out your whiney backhanded compliments,” he crooned. “I’ve got this, baby.” 

She glared at him, annoyed at how much fun he was having at her expense. On the other hand, she _was_ relieved that he wasn’t freaking out. “I really don’t like being called baby,” she said. She had very patiently ignored this endearment, but since that wasn’t working, and she was having a bad day, it was time to call it.

“There they are, Uncle Gabe,” Lois’ overly hearty voice reached them. Somebody knew that she was in big trouble with Chloe, Oliver guessed. 

“Where is—you left my Dad in our apartment?” Lois yelped, “Alone? Really, Chloe!” 

Lois charged up the stairs. 

“Sam’s probably already started his inspection,” Gabe said gamely from below on the stairs.

Oliver kissed her forehead, before turning away from their embrace, his arm draped over Chloe’s shoulders. “Chloe’s Dad, right?” he said, rubbing Chloe’s arm. “I’m Oliver Queen.”

It wasn’t just vanity. He was pretty sure that he was the parental equivalent of a winning lottery ticket. Assuming that the parent didn’t know that he had also slept with his niece. Or that six months ago he was a falling down drunk, habitué of fight clubs, man-slutting his way around the globe. 

Yeah, if Chloe’s dad knew that, this was a train wreck.

Gabe’s eyes shifted from Oliver to Chloe and back again as he came up the stairs. “Gabe Sullivan,” he introduced himself. “It’s nice to meet you,” he said politely before pointedly adding, “I never met the other one.”

Chloe rolled her eyes, extracting herself from Oliver’s embrace. “I’m going to go check on Lois and Uncle Sam,” she said. “Be nice, Dad,” she said before poking Oliver in the ribs. “Don’t embarrass me,” she ordered.

Oliver put on a wounded expression. “Baby—“

Gabe shook his hand. “Go rescue your cousin,” he told his daughter. “We’re fine.”

Chloe heaved a sigh and returned to her apartment. “Huh,” Oliver grunted. “Surprise visit?”

Gabe shrugged. “Something like that. Chloe doesn’t know that we’ve talked before?”

“Nope,” Oliver said. “The other one?”

Gabe gave him the original raised eyebrow look. “He kept breaking up with my daughter at the drop of a hat even after they got married,” Gabe countered. 

Huh. Oliver hadn’t really thought of it that way before. “Well, he’s dead,” he pointed out. 

“Yeah,” Gabe sighed. “While in the process of making up. Again,” he shook his head. “Let me sum it up for you, Oliver: _unreliable_.”

“Okay!” Oliver recognized a losing battle. 

“Interesting. You didn’t mention that you were dating my daughter . . . my daughter who works for you,” Gabe said.

“I wasn’t. Am now, but not then,” Oliver clarified. “It’s kind of new.”

Gabe gave him a shrewd look. “Not really sure where you stand with her?” he guessed.

Oliver snorted. “I know where I stand,” he made a face. “On most days she’s barely willing to admit that I’m someone she knows.”

Gabe frowned. “Lois seems to think this is serious,” he said.

Oliver debated about what to tell him. “Lois needs to mind her own business,” he said after a long moment. 

There was a scuffling sound, then Lois’s voice reached them. “That belongs to Chloe, Dad!” she yelped.

Oliver spared a moment to mentally applaud the General for making Lois miserable too. He gestured to the door. “Should we—“

Gabe shook his head. “We’d just be in the way.”

There was an awkward pause. For the first time in his adult life, Oliver wished that he had the foresight to be a meet the parents kind of guy so he’d have some practice at it before it actually counted. 

“Normally this is the kind of thing that would have me finding a reason to be on another continent, so . . . do you play golf?”

Gabe nodded slowly. He was visibly trying not to laugh at him. 

Oliver had seen that look on Chloe’s face too. He took it as a good sign. He was sure that one of the things that Chloe liked about him was that she thought he was funny. 

“Right? So, I’ll clear my calendar for an afternoon, and we’ll play a round,” he said. 

“On this continent?”

“Nothing normal going on here, sir,” Oliver assured him.

Gabe smiled suddenly. “It’s Smallville, son. Nothing normal is what I’d expect. Golf it is. We’ll drink beer and you can tell me about how my little girl has you tied up in knots.”

 

By dinner, the General had a list of things he expected Oliver to take care of that was passed over to Oliver while Lois flashed a glassy-eyed smile at everyone and Chloe sneered. She snatched the list out of Oliver’s hand to read.

“Really, Uncle Sam? Leave him alone,” she ordered, sounding cranky as hell. Since it wasn’t directed at him, Oliver thought it was cute. She had changed clothes and was wearing a rose colored sleeveless dress with elegant black heels and a double strand of pearls. While they were still at her apartment in Smallville, she had bullied her father and uncle with a speech about how important it was to her that she not be identified in public as his girlfriend because she did not want to be the subject of gossip.

Lois pretended to be busy in the kitchen while Oliver leaned against the kitchen island interrupting occasionally, like when he backed up Chloe by telling her Dad and her uncle that she refused to be seen in public with him.

“Is it really dating if you flirt a lot at work, but you don’t really go anywhere?” he asked at one point, rendering Chloe mute for nearly thirty seconds while Gabe gave her an inquisitive look. He was pretty sure he had an ally there. 

Reading the list over Chloe’s shoulder, Oliver just chuckled. “We should frame this,” he teased. “We can prove to the kids that the crazy comes from your family,” he said. 

General Lane ignored him. “You don’t seem happy,” he observed, as if that was Oliver’s fault.

“You’re talking about kids?” Lois was diverted. She had been surreptitiously texting Clark through dinner.

“Erin and Will,” he rolled his eyes at that, giving a head tilt in Chloe’s direction. 

Chloe gave her uncle the raised eyebrow look. “Really? You want to throw down, right here, Uncle Sam?”

“Shut _up!_ Your maybe-someday kids have names!” Lois was astonished, and partially vindicated. She patted herself on the back for astutely concluding that Chloe’s no-strings, no-complications claims were a desperate cry for help or back up. “Chloe never told me that.”

Sam crossed his arms over his chest. “Bring it on, little girl.”

“Willie Queen,” Gabe chuckled. “That’s never going to happen,” he predicted.

“I know.” Oliver gave his new favorite future in-law a nod, pleased that they were on the same wavelength. “Chloe thinks that unplanned pregnancy is a bad reason to get married,” he confided, wincing when Chloe’s fingernails dug into his leg. 

“Being married and divorced before she finished college must have put that into perspective,” Gabe observed.

Chloe gritted her teeth, dropping her glare fest with her uncle to shift to her father. “And you wonder why I told you not to bother to come to the wedding, Dad?”

Sam Lane came to his brother-in-law’s defense, “You told us that you were getting married in a barn, with Lois as your wedding planner, and your first choice for giving you away was your high school crush,” he said. “I thought we were being punked.”

Oliver slipped his hand under hers and laced their fingers together. “Private dining room, next time,” he said sotto voce to Chloe, looking for their waiter.

Lois buried her face in her hands. “I’m so sorry, Chlo,” she moaned. 

Clark Kent took that moment to amble in looking reliably clueless, but brightening as soon as he spotted his girlfriend. 

Chloe’s attention shifted from Clark to Lois to Sam. 

“Check, please?”

“Look! It’s your future son-in-law,” Chloe muttered. 

“Hah!” Lois looked desperate. “That actually was a . . . misunderstanding. When you think about it, Chlo, crazy stuff happens pretty regularly to us.”

Oliver had his wallet out and was handing over his card. “Just bring the check with the charge slip, and we’re good,” he said to the waiter, hoping to get out of there before Chloe exploded.

Sitting between Lois and Gabe, Clark provided a much-needed distraction, rewinding a version of the Valentine’s Day story that omitted the parts where Kryptonite was involved or buildings were destroyed. By the time they got to the inedible roast, even General Lane was chuckling. Chloe quietly slipped away to the bathroom. 

Oliver caught Gabe watching her go with a pensive look. 

The waiter returned with his charge slip and card, and Oliver paid. Gabe got up to intercept Chloe on her way back to the table and they walked out together, his head bent to hers. 

“What are you planning to do with my list, son?” General Lane asked.

Oliver slipped his card back in his wallet. “Souvenir?” he folded the note and tucked it in to his pocket. 

He pointed to Lois. “You? Cancel Christmas, Lois. You are in big trouble. I told you to leave it alone. Do you have any idea how hard it is going to be to figure out if Chloe’s broken up with me when she doesn’t admit that she’s with me in the first place?”

Clark looked from Lois to Oliver and back again. “What is he talking about, Lois?” he asked.

General Lane looked interested in the answer to that.

“Why did you come here, Dad?” Lois asked.

Clark brightened. “I know the answer,” he said, like it was a quiz. “You told your Dad that we were getting married, so he was probably planning to drop in when he was in the neighborhood.”

General Lane nodded. “You aren’t ad complete idiot. Why don’t you want to marry my daughter?”

Oliver beamed at Lois and Clark. “Now I feel better,” he said. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go chase down my ‘girlfriend’ and let her know that you walked right into that ambush,” he said.

General Lane started trimming a cigar. “I like him Lois,” he said as Oliver sauntered away in search of Chloe. “Now, back to this one,” his attention returned to Clark. “If I have this right, when you were a teenager, you broke my favorite niece’s heart. That was you wasn’t it? What do you have to say for yourself, Kent?”

 

“I like him,” Gabe unwittingly echoed his brother-in-law as he walked with Chloe.

She laughed, but there was a bitter edge to it. “I do too, Dad. Everyone does. Oliver is very charming. You should see him talk his way out of a ticket,” she said, and then inwardly smacked herself for being a bitch.

He nodded. “What are you doing tomorrow morning?” he asked.

She took a deep breath. “Nothing. Do you want to do something?”

He got his phone out and shook his head. “The weather is still set for Phoenix,” he said.

Chloe held out her hand, smiling. She found his weather app and changed the city to Metropolis, and then she showed him how to change the settings globally so that the weather app would update based on the location of the phone. 

“Dad! You are still on airplane mode, “she said.

He hugged her. “I can’t get over how grown up you are,” he said. 

“Do you like Phoenix?” she asked.

“No,” he shook his head. “It’s too dry. There’s an opening in Minneapolis. There is something that I want to talk to you about,” he said as he checked his weather app for tomorrow. “Clear skies, 52 degrees? I can play golf in that,” he said, shutting the phone. “Tomorrow morning?”

“Where are you staying?” she asked.

“Hotel, by the airport,” he said. “Why don’t we go get breakfast in the morning, and I would like to go pay my respects to your late husband,” he said, lifting his hand to wave at Oliver.

“What happened to Sam?” he asked when Oliver reached them.

“He had some questions about Lois’s brief engagement,” Oliver said with a smile. “Did he marry your sister, or did you marry his?”

“Our wives were sisters,” Gabe said. “I met Ella in college. We went on one date, and the next time I called, her sister answered the phone, and that was it for me.” He hugged Chloe again, kissing her temple. 

“I’m going to go rescue your cousin if you want to get out of here,” Gabe said. “I’ll call you, and you can pick me up in the morning?”

Chloe nodded.

“Are we going to play a round tomorrow?” he asked Oliver.

“Sure,” Oliver agreed. 

He took Chloe’s hand and threaded it through his arm. 

“I can get a ride back to Smallville with Lois and Clark,” she said.

Her car was there. He expected as much. “Okay,” he said quietly.

“Ollie, I’m—“

He turned to her, touching her chin. “Please don’t apologize,” he interrupted. “Don’t Chloe.”

She stepped into his embrace. “You poor orphan boy,” she muttered. “You’ve got a man-crush on my Dad.”

“What?” he protested.

“You’re taking him to play golf? You agreed with him about everything! Suck up.”

She kissed his cheek. “Have fun with my Dad tomorrow.”

He smiled down at her. “Ask me if I’d take you home with me even if it meant losing points with your Dad, Goldilocks.”

She looked tempted, but she shook her head in the negative. 

Lois and Clark emerged from the restaurant, and they went to join them. “I need a lift home, Clark,” Chloe said before she went to kiss her uncle and say goodnight to him.

 

When her Dad put his hand on the top of Jimmy’s gravestone and leaned down to place a bouquet of lilies on his grave, Chloe had to look away. Sunlight glanced off the water in the distance, and her throat was uncomfortably tight. It helped that it was cold enough that her breath left her in frosty gusts. She made herself breath deep until the pressure in her chest eased.

“I should have been here, baby. I’m sorry,” her Dad said when he returned to her side.

She shook her head. “I didn’t tell you until after the funeral.”

“Actually, Oliver called me. I was still mad that he sent you those divorce papers. I—“ he sighed. “Well, it doesn’t matter what I thought. I should have come for you.”

He pointed to a bench under a tree. “Come sit with me for a minute. There is something I need to talk to you about.”

When she was sitting, he took her hand. “This is a beautiful place,” he said. 

Some of the tension in the shoulders eased. 

“I never worried about you until I met him,” Gabe said.

She had taken Jimmy to meet her dad when he was in Metropolis on business once. 

Her father shook his head. “He seemed nice enough,” he allowed. “I just . . . all that time when you were a teenager, and you were so crazy about Clark. I was so proud of the way you didn’t let that get in the way of remaining friends with Clark and Lana. I thought that it was harder and kinder than anyone had any right to expect from a teenager. You had such a clear, strong sense of what you wanted to do and the kind of person you wanted to be.”

“I made a lot of mistakes,” she said.

“You did,” he agreed. “You didn’t run away from a bad decision, or keep making more bad decisions.”

He was quiet for a moment. “When I met Jimmy I felt like I’d missed something obvious. I thought that you didn’t understand that love is not a transaction. It seemed like you had settled for the first man who recognized all of the things in you that make you special, and if he could give you the life that had been taken away from you when your mother left, that was all you needed to love him.”

“Dad,” her voice shook a little. 

“I’m not trying to tell you that you didn’t love him, or that you don’t feel the loss of him in your life,” Gabe said. “I’m telling you that I understand why you loved him, and what he meant to you. It was hard for me to accept that because when I lost your mother, I never wanted to feel that kind of pain again. And I didn’t ever want to see it in you.”

Chloe’s vision blurred. She took a deep breath, and then another, biting down on her lip, turning her face into her Dad’s shoulder as the tears came hot and fast. 

There was a ball of something old and painful lodged in her chest that she had held onto that just came undone. Dimly, she could hear her dad telling her that he was sorry, for not being there, for not facing his own loss so he could help her.

She found a few tissues in the bottom of her purse when she got herself back under control. 

“Chloe . . .” he looked so pained. “I’m getting a divorce from your mother,” he said.

 

“I didn’t realize that they were still married,” Lois said. They were having lunch at a restaurant across the street from the Daily Planet. 

Chloe threw her hands up. “Exactly.”

“I honestly think he expected something more than, ‘oh, I didn’t know that you were still married to Mom’.”

Lois’s nose wrinkled. “How mad are you?”

Chloe held out her hand. “What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t thinking that they were going to come here,” she said glumly. “Apparently Lucy is on spring break and Dad cleared his calendar in case she did something to get herself in trouble.”

There was a moment of silence before Lois said, “Clark and I don’t have our maybe-baby names picked out. Is that weird?”

 

When she arrived at Watchtower after seeing her father and uncle off at the airport, Chloe found a framed 16’x20’ photo of Bart, perched on an ancient Roman latrine with reading a strategically placed newspaper, with his pants down around his ankles. She hung up her coat and went to find a hammer and nail to hang the picture over the commode in the renovated bathroom. She was on her way back down when Watchtower announced Oliver’s arrival. Her heart did something that she was starting to get used to. 

Maybe her Dad was right. Maybe she had settled. She never thought of it that way. She wanted someone who got her, and Jimmy was more right than wrong about her. He found Watchtower for her. 

Watching Oliver come through the doors, she wondered if he was settling. Lately, he had gotten awfully comfortable with them. She teased him about developing a crush on her dad, but it wasn’t hard to see how he craved connection and purpose. 

“Breaking up is complicated, so we aren’t doing that, right?” he called out.

Chloe Sullivan was not the girl that got the romantic gestures. She boxed that up between watching Clark Kent hang on Lana Lang’s every word and seeing that focus pass, without Clark even noticing it, to her cousin, Lois. That was okay, too. She probably wouldn’t have trusted an extravagant gesture. The world she lived in was a place full of mysteries that require examination, where sudden, unexpected, and larger than life was often violent, heartbreaking, and occasionally world ending. 

She has lived inside the idea that there are things more important that what she wants, and who she loves for so long, and she’s lost so much. She saw the world’s great need and accepted that need as the engine that would shape and sharpen her gifts. Surrendering to high purpose freed her from heartbreak and bound her in purpose. 

Sometime after Valentine’s Day when she was twenty-three going on dead at twenty-four, that changed. She was showered with poems and love letters, the music of her life became a love song, and she spun in the sparkling swirl of dust motes caught in multicolor light that changed with the time of day and weather, but rarely if ever, went completely dark.

She didn’t miss a step down the spiral staircase, on the way down to meet him.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Link to art: http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/bkwurm1/12629216/21186/21186_900.jpg

Champagne was flowing freely when Chloe walked down the corridor to Oliver’s office. She felt disoriented. It was after eight, and there were too many people still on the floor even though the lights in most of the offices were off. Except for Oliver’s. Light spilled into the curving hallway. 

A smile touched her lips as she realized what was going on. Oliver had concluded the deal to sell the Geo-thermal plant. Now that the clean-up was months away from completion and the EPA had signed off on the work so far, the property was available. He had been working on this for months. The city and state had gotten on board with a plan to beautify the old industrial basin. 

She could have just quietly let herself into Oliver’s office to wait for him, but she could hear his voice, and she was curious. She knew what he was like to work with, but she wondered if what his day job colleagues saw was different. His late night reading ran to reports with titles intended to cure insomnia or induce a coma. He was, at times, impatient with detail, but Chloe realized that was at least in part because he could read faster than anyone could tell him something. If he asked a question, he didn’t want to know what someone thought, not what they knew.

“. . . You’ve seen the preliminary plans, and the genesis of a lot of what will be expressed in the development began with the disaster recovery team’s recommendation that a portion of the plant be used to memorialize the lives lost,” Oliver said to applause. “Stand up,” he laughed, “you, too, Mindy,” he said, “I’m so proud of you guys, for the vision that informed the work that follows,” he toasted them.

Two people walked past Chloe with a curious glance at her, before joining the group in the conference room. A third person, a woman in a suit with an abundance of spectacularly curly brown hair trailed behind them, pausing in the open doorway. 

Tess Mercer came up from behind Chloe. “Chloe Sullivan?”

It was the tone that made Chloe’s eyebrow twitch. Really? So what if the last time they had seen each other they had wrestled over a gun?

“Tess,” she said evenly, tilting her head back even as she had to look up. Tess had her hair pulled back in a knot and she was wearing a severely chic black suit. 

The woman in the doorway walked in, leaving her alone with Tess.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “Or do I need to ask? Skulking around in the dark, after hours?”

Chloe let her eyes open wider, effecting an expression of bland innocence. She had noticed in the past that it irritated Tess. “I’m here to see a friend, Tess.”

“Friend? Is that what you are going with?” Tess mocked.

Holding a pair of champagne flutes, Oliver stepped out into the hallway. “Tess,” he beckoned. “You want to come in and say a few words.”

He passed one of the champagne glasses to Tess when she crossed paths with him at the door. He stuck around for a moment, politely clapping as Tess started her bit about what a great day this was for the company and the city.

Julia sidled over to him and mimed call holding, pointing at his office to give him an excuse to slip out while Tess was talking. 

“Hey,” he said, catching up with Chloe in the hall. “Did you see your dad and uncle off?” 

“I did,” she said. He usually favored earth tones, but today he was in black with a gold tie against a white shirt. “Big day?”

He nodded, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Huge,” he said, walking backward to face her, ducking his head down to ask, “Does that mean I’m going to see you tonight?” 

Basking in his attention, Chloe flirted back. “Miss me?”

“No,” he denied it, shaking his head, giving her a sideways look that bloomed into a grin. “Maybe a little,” he allowed. 

“Hey,” he caught her arm, “why don’t you stay and have a drink. We’ve got miniature food,” he was reading her body language. She was clinging to the strap on her laptop like it was a lifeline. “No?” he guessed.

She declined with a demure shrug. “Lois and I went out to dinner.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m in the mood for a nice long bath and I might curl up in front of a fireplace.”

“I won’t be long here,” he promised, walking her to the elevator.

 

“What did you do to my Dad?” Chloe asked. 

Oliver was looking down at the vanity. She had quite a collection of bath products massed. 

Chloe was sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace with her freshly painted toes warming and her skin pink from the exfoliating gloves she used. Her hair was combed smooth. She had more or less laid claim to his favorite sweater and it was falling off one shoulder. 

When he got home, she was in the bathtub with minty pink mud smeared all over her face, so he didn’t get much more than a kiss before she shooed him away so she could finish her bath. He got out of his work clothes and into the shower. She joined him while the tub was draining for a rinse because sitting in a tub made everything that stuck to the tub also stick to you—or so she claimed. 

He was pretty sure it was just a feeble face-saving excuse to cover for her need to ogle and grope him. He had joined her in the shower before for the same reason.

She got out to dry her hair, which was necessary since her hair held water like a sponge and the last time she hadn’t bothered, it had soaked through a pillow. Now that he was out of the shower, he was stuck resenting her toes. Nail polish dried fast, but it didn’t set hard for at least twenty minutes.

He went to the kitchen to retrieve an already open bottle of wine from the refrigerator and a pair of glasses. 

When he came back to the bedroom, it smelled pleasantly of something coconut. She was rubbing her elbow into the palm of one hand. She kneeled on the flokati rug and patted the bed, taking the glass of wine he offered her. 

“You want me to sit there?” he surmised.

She hummed her agreement. “You can reach the nightstand?” 

“Yeah,” he watched her shift to sit cross-legged with a fat tube of blue green goo and a white tube next to her. 

She patted his left leg. “Give me your foot.”

“You’re going to give me a foot rub?” he lowered his voice like he was conveying a big secret. “The best parts to rub are further up.”

He got a saucy grin out of her. “Shush. When you start making the really good sounds, you’ll see,” she predicted.

The blue goo was cold and a little tingly.

“Seriously, Ollie. What did you do to my dad?”

“My feet are a little ticklish,” he warned. 

“I’ll be gentle,” she humored him.

He took a sip of his wine. “Your Dad? Well . . .”

They played golf and drank beer with Emil. Josh and Mia caddied, though it was mostly Josh. Mia was just tagging along and tormenting Josh. 

“Your dad is a terrible golfer,” Oliver added. “Is it supposed to burn?” he asked.

“A little, but let me know if your skin starts to melt, you big baby,” Chloe moved to his other foot. “Uncle Sam said dad had a hangover.”

“Who knew that being a lightweight was genetic,” he scoffed. “Yeah, so let’s see . . . your dad told us about your first crush—“

Chloe laughed. “Bill Nye?”

He nodded. “Yep! And then Perry White?” he grimaced. “He was surprised that you weren’t into Emil since he has some gray hair, and he’s smarter than you,” he teased. “Emil told him that you were scary—“

“Stop making stuff up,” she scolded.

“I’m not! Let’s see . . .” Oliver pondered. “I was six under and I eagled, and there was some hating on my awesome swing.” The white tube came out and Chloe rubbed two fat globs of it between her hands before returning to his first foot. “Aw! The burning is finally becoming tolerable,” he protested.

He got an exasperated look, and she manhandled his foot into position and started working the goop into his foot with long strokes of her palms and thumb.

“Relax,” she ordered, working under his toes. “I thought you didn’t like golf.”

“I know! I’m just good at it,” he leaned back on his elbow, nodding. “Okay . . . you’re getting to the good stuff,” he said, biting his lip as she worked on his arch. “That’s . . . lean forward and give me some cleavage,” he teased her.

Her eyebrows rose, and she leered back at him playfully, rolling her shoulders. The sweater slipped a little more, but not quite enough. 

“Tease!” 

She kept at it until he felt a very manly exhale of relief rumbling in his chest. His other foot was cool and tingly, and he curled his toes into her fluffy rug, not even bothering to resent how the damn thing would not stop shedding. 

She was waiting for him to continue.

He nodded. “Uh . . . oh, yeah. You’re dad said that he made you cry, and Emil was—“ he chuckled, “Emil is hilarious, you know? You don’t expect it, and then he’s telling your dad to run because making you cry is worse than putting baby in the corner, and I think your dad was ready to trade up at that point.”

She smiled, shaking her head at that while he flexed his foot and made a happy sound at the deep tissue massage at the heel of his foot. “That’s nice.”

He sipped his wine while she worked on his other foot, letting his eyes rest. “Did you really cry?” he asked.

She nodded, pausing. “He wanted to visit Jimmy’s grave,” she said, swallowing. “He apologized for not being there.”

She grimaced. “He also implied that the only reason I was with Jimmy was because I was damaged by being the product of a broken home, and that he was sorry for that too.”

Oliver frowned. “Chloe . . . that’s not really what he said, was it?”

“Close enough,” she muttered. “He’s getting a divorce,” she added.

He sat up. “What? _Whoa!_ What? That’s kind of big, isn’t it?”

She gave him a look, pausing on his arch. “I didn’t know they were still married.”

“Oh,” he frowned again. “Huh. That’s a little weird.” He was pretty sure that he knew that, or assumed it based on talking to Gabe a few years ago about arrangements for Chloe’s mother’s care.

She got quiet for a moment, lips pursed, her expression becoming pensive. Oliver wiggled his toes to get her attention.

“Talk to me,” he invited. 

She didn’t look inclined to take him up on the offer, but after she finished with his right foot, she scooped up her wine glass, resting her arms on his knees. “Do you think that _that_ is what _this_ is about?” 

He was operating with only a vague sense of what _that_ was, and _this_ was them. It was a good thing that she didn’t talk about sex in verbal italics, because that might have killed it for him.

She spun the liquid in the bottom of the glass. “I thought he was saying that he believed that he was staying married to my mom for my sake, and because it was easier to be married and cut off any possibility of being hurt like that again.”

Ah . . . he nodded, nudging her with his foot. “What do you think?”

She grimaced. “I think it sounds very hypocritical that I wanted to smack him with my purse and tell him to grow up,” she complained. 

He sat up enough to reach her head, combing his fingers through her hair. “Why don’t you come up here with me?” he suggested.

She gave him a gimlet-eyed look. “I kind of like the view from here,” she admitted. “Your hipbones are . . . amazing. They’re like great punctuation,” she said, handing him her wineglass, and pushing his knees apart to get closer. 

He was wearing a pair of low hanging pajama pants, and she rubbed her cheek against his groin as she ran her index finger over the hollow inside his right hipbone. Stuck with minding two wineglasses, Oliver watched her with a hooded expression, while she explored with her fingertips. She reclaimed her wineglass to take another long sip, while he leaned over to get rid of his by placing it on the nightstand. 

When he reached for her glass, she evaded him, burying her face in his stomach, breathing in the warm, clean scent of him. Her tongue flicked his skin, and her lips slid over the slicked spot. When she turned her head, the cool heaviness of her hair brushed his skin, and he made another attempt to get the wineglass from her.

She nipped at his skin with her teeth, soothing the sting away before she lifted her head and brought the glass back to her lips to take the last swallow before surrendering the glass to him. With both hands free, she ran her hands over his chest and back down, hooking the waistband of his pants. He reached down, slipping his hand inside to cover his junk as he lifted his hips for her. 

He had a pretty good idea where she was going with this when his pants were off and she was running her hands up his thighs. He ran his fingers over his cock, mimicking her lighter touch until he needed the firm pressure of his hand pulling up from the base and over, and then back down. When her head came up and over, he shuddered, anticipating the warmth of her mouth. Her hand lightly touched his, wordlessly communicating that she didn’t want him to stop what he was doing while she took him into her mouth. 

His free hand found her arm, and then her hand, desperate to touch her. She freed her fingers, squeezing his forearm, working her hand up to his elbow to nudge his arm toward her. Realizing that she wanted him to touch her, he did, until his fingers were twisted in her hair.

A funny thing happened on the way to whatever they were becoming. He wasn’t in control all the time, and it was okay. It was better than okay judging by the happy way she cuddled into him after he came, and before she scampered off to rinse her mouth before returning to remove his sweater and turn down the flame in the fireplace and returning to him.

“Oh, no,” he teased. “Your hands smell like my feet.”

She laughed at that and told him about the time that she got asked out on a date at a convenience store off the highway at the Grandville Road exit to Smallville when she had to go out and pick up coffee after she had used her foot balm.

“And you think it was because your feet smelled good?” 

He was fully prepared to explain what was appealing about her based on a look. He started with her eyes and her smile.

When he got to her fingertips, he warned her that this could take a while, and she laughed. 

“I thought you were going to start complaining that my hands were making you burn.” 

He grinned. “The thought might have crossed my mind, but I was prepared to endure it,” his fingers ringed her smaller wrist as his thumb stroked the skin over the inside of her wrist.

“Remember when you were all stoked to try out KY Excite? I _did_ Google it. Verdict: mixed. Tingly for some, burning sensation for others. Lots of snark about operator error.”

“Yeah?” He traced the vein on the inside of her arm up to her elbow. “Curious?”

Her eyes were warm, soft, full of trust and affection. Her arm curled around his neck, surreptitiously rubbing to take away the tickling sensation his fingertips had left on the inside of her arm. Their lips met in a slow, sensuous kiss that went a little sideways at the nose stinging minty-ness of her freshly rinsed mouth.

The fact that she had used mouth wash had him snickering until she punched him, and then he lost it, hugging her as he let it out. 

“I was just being considerate,” she said plaintively. 

“I know!” he sympathized. “It just caught me by surprise when it hit my sinus’,” he mimed the eye popping impact. 

“You are lucky that I like you,” she told him. “I can’t believe you threw me under the bus like that—“

Whoa! “What?”

She gave him a pointed look. “Is it really dating if you don’t go anywhere and you just flirt a lot at work?” she reminded him.

“I thought I was helping,” he protested. “No?”

“Not so much,” she muttered. “This is going to back fire on me when I’m old and I have lots of cats, and everyone whispers behind my back about how I blew it.”

He rolled his eyes. That was unlikely. “I’m trying to make it up to you.”

By his count, he did. Twice. 

“It’s not that anymore,” she said later, when they were both sated, and hovering on the edge of sleep. 

A few days later, that was demonstrated more dramatically when he was ambushed by the group Sylvester Pemberton tried to warn Chloe about, and Chloe was detained and held at gunpoint. Clark barely got to her in time to save Chloe from a bullet, and even then it required an assist from Tess—revealed to be a Checkmate agent—and Jonn, to keep their identities from being compromised. 

 

They celebrated her birthday on Wednesday night. Chloe didn’t catch on until the cake was brought out. It was an unusually well attended team dinner with AC, Victor, Bart, and Dinah in town. Carter played host and they met at the JSA’s brownstone. The Whitmores, Ted Grant, and Jonn were also there. The brownstone had a small enclosed patio in the back with string lights. 

Since her dad’s visit and their accidental couple’s vacation, the tension between Chloe and Clark had eased. Clark’s job was to keep her out of the kitchen and get her outside after dinner. She started to work out that something was up when AC and Victor brought out two tubs full of iced beer and champagne. 

Clark laughed at her surprised expression when Courtney joined them, carrying a cake, followed by Dinah and Oliver with plates and utensils. He rubbed her back and kissed her cheek. “Happy birthday, Chloe.”

It took way the ache of his absence from her last birthday. 

“Get ready to make a wish,” Emil said as the candles were lit.

She looked for Oliver and found him holding a knife and cake server. He nodded to her.

Next she caught Pat Whitmore’s eye. He toasted her with a beer bottle. “Kitchen remodel,” he hinted with a wink.

Bart hugged her from the other side. “Happy birthday, beautiful,” he said, kissing her temple.

“Beer or champagne, Chloe?” AC called out.

“It’s got to be champagne, with cake,” Mia called out. 

Carter steered her over to the cake where Dinah was lighting the last few candles. Dinah blew out the last match. “Got your wish?” she asked with a friendly grin.

Chloe laughed, shaking her head. “No. Last year I learned that wishes are ephemeral. This year I’m just grateful to know that what I want is something I can work on every day.”

AC reached in to hand her a champagne glass. “With you,” she added, raising her glass to them. “I have everything I need.”

Courtney aw’ed, and urged her to make a wish anyway because the candles were starting to drip on the cake, and everyone laughed as Chloe blew the candles out, blinking as the smoke blew back to sting her eyes.

“You ready to cut the cake, birthday girl?” Oliver asked.

She took a quick sip of the champagne and handed the glass to Courtney, who looked over at her mother. “Just one glass?” she asked.

Interpreting the ‘no’ that was coming, Mia held up a bottle. “We’ve got some sparkling cider here.”

After removing the extinguished candles, Chloe took the knife from Oliver and started cutting, accepting happy birthday wishes as cake was served. The first bite made her want to trade her champagne for coffee. 

“Have you tried this?” she asked Oliver, loading a bite on her fork.

“Good?” he guessed.

She held the fork up for him and he let her feed him a bite. “That is good,” he agreed. “Mia made it,” he told her.

Mia heard him. “It was mostly Julia,” she corrected.

“Thank you—“

“Over here, birthday girl!” a camera flash left her blinking and AC swooped in to give her a hug and a kiss before passing her over to Victor. 

She lost her cake and her champagne in the round of hugging and kissing that followed. Victor got music started and kept Mia, Courtney, and Bart from quarreling over the playlist. 

“Good toast,” Carter told her. “Work on twenty-three going on twenty-four this year, kid,” he advised.

Before she made it back around to Oliver, she wasn’t thinking about who knew, or who would care, or how it would change things. The patio was paved with bricks, her feet were starting to hurt, and seating was limited. Collecting a glass of champagne, she sat on the arm of his chair and leaned over to kiss him, catching a look of surprise on his face before his hand curled around her neck while he kissed her back.

“Good birthday?”

“Best,” she murmured. 

 

Ever since the night of her birthday, and in the wake of their run-in with Checkmate, everything between them feels turbo charged. They didn’t talk about it. Oliver remembered thinking that their connection—the way they usually knew what the other was thinking well enough to finish a sentence with no more than a look—was convenient. 

It also means that he knew all kinds of things about her. He caught her looking at him, long enough that her screen saver came up. It was a new one that started with an image of one of Watchtower’s stained glass windows. The light passing through the glass changes in a sequence that he recognizes as day to night. The colors bleed and the separations between the glass blends as pinpoints of light repeating the day to night sequence bleed and separation to build the Justice League symbol he’s been messing around with in doodles on the margins of notepads.

Chloe was on her back, on his couch, in nothing but a lace edged t-shirt and a pair of boy shorts. Her eyes were sleepy warmth and unfocused desire and her hair was tousled. 

That was the moment when his heart seized, because he knew. She was falling in love with them. It’s all there, and it’s been there for a while. They’ve ignored it. He’s actively blocked it out. It’s exactly where all of his relationships wound up before he tied it off in one way or the other and that was pretty damned inconvenient. He knew that he was not going to be the one to end it. He didn’t want to think of all the reasons she might have for ending it. 

Trusting his computer to save what he was working on, he left it. He needed to think. If she was in love with him, it changed things. Standing, he stretched, working out the kinks in his spine. Chloe blinked, closing her eyes to rest them for a moment before opening them and dragging a fingertip across her touch pad to wake her laptop up. 

He recognized her distraction. She wasn’t thinking about him specifically. She was just resting her eyes and her busy mind for a moment and he was there. Her screen resolved into solid black broken only by lines of code. Her hands flexed, she tilted her hips to get a better angle on the keyboard resting on her abdomen, and started typing again on a soft touch keyboard that gives a muted clatter as she adds more lines of code.

Queen Industries’ IT chief had been chasing her for two weeks through cyber-space, and Oliver would have called it a crush if Michael wasn’t convinced that the perpetrator of the hacking was part of an Eastern European cyber-crime syndicate. Michael Donohue was a MIT graduate and the only QI corporate officer younger than Oliver. There had been at least two occasions in the last month when Oliver thought Michael was getting close enough that he was going to have to intervene and either tell the other man something close to the truth or enlist Victor in creating a crisis to distract him from the hunt.

On autopilot now, he mounted the treadmill and queued up his warm-up routine because sex wasn’t exercise, and he felt uncomfortable about what he thought he knew. It put them on unequal footing. So he worked up to a run, challenged by the program on the treadmill to pace himself through the gradually increasing incline that worked his legs. 

Sex might not be exercise, but it worked for Chloe. After a while she closed her laptop and got up to go to the kitchen with her coffee cup in hand. When they started this, her body was different. She still had a little cushion of lingering baby fat that gave a delicious softness under her skin, and left her body slightly cooler than his, so when he found her in bed, he’d pull her close to keep her warm. She had turned twenty-three in the time that they had been together. In a normal world, she would have been working applications for an advanced studies program or considering offers from employers as she completed a master’s degree. There was still something unformed about her, though she almost always seemed to know exactly what she was supposed to be doing. He had a fairly good idea about how profoundly Clark Kent altered the trajectory of her life. 

He wasn’t sure how much of that was Clark anymore, how much of it was Chloe, and how much of it was him.

When she came back from the kitchen she had her coffee cup refilled and a bottle of water for him. He was sweating freely now, heart rate elevated, lungs working, moving without pain. The rest of his workout snapped into place in his head. He was going to finish his run, work with the heavy bag. Finish with yoga, re-hydrate, eat something, and then he was going to make sure that she got her version of exercise, a couple of times over. According to Chloe, it wasn’t the sex that provided the total body tone up, it was the orgasm. 

Because that was their thing, and it was comfortable and convenient, and a whole lot of other things that added up to a private island consisting of them, marooned. It once required carving out chunks of time, but lately seems to spring in place at will. He twisted his head from side to side, digging in for the last five minutes of his workout with the ice cold sweating bottle of water left just out of reach as his goal. 

The treadmill program was shifting into his cool down run. He almost abandoned his work out when he heard the shower, but he drank half of the bottle of water and moved on to the rest of his work out. When he finished, he found a plate waiting for him on the counter with cut fruit and cheese, a couple of slices of crisp bacon, a spicy gazpacho, and flat bread. His stomach growled as he went to the refrigerator looking for something to drink. 

Chloe came down from the bedroom. Lately more and more of her clothing had been migrating from The Talon and Watchtower to his penthouse, but it was mostly loungewear mined with lingerie that got mixed into his laundry. 

She was wearing a sleek three quarter sleeve top in red with a graphite tweed knit skirt that looked poured on over black boots. It was an outfit he hadn’t seen before, and on a couple of points he approved. He liked the form fitting top and the skirt, and the boots. The part where it looked like she was headed out, he wasn’t as enthusiastic about. Visions of feeding her wine and plying her naked body with dripping fruit were not immediately dispelled. 

“I’m going to meet Courtney for lunch,” she said.

Courtney? It figured. The JSA existed in its present form to annoy him. The kid went around in a uniform that made her look like a refugee from cheerleading camp or the world’s most guileless prostitute. She probably needed all the help anyone could give her to grow up semi-normal. Still his head dropped in disappointment. 

Chloe gave him an amused look. The trouble with being on the same page almost all of the time was that she could read him too. 

“I made you lunch,” she pointed out, like it was a peace offering.

He looked over at his lunch. “I know. I had all sorts of plans for you, a bottle of wine, peeled grapes, and a long, leisurely lunch,” he said. 

Her eyebrow rose in an arch look that made her look like sex poured over her usual snark. “Got plans for dinner?”

“I can start working on plans if you are coming back.” 

“Don’t go crazy,” she said lightly, turning her face up to be kissed. 

His stomach growled again, and he frowned. “Yeah, I gotta eat,” he gave her a quick kiss. “Then I have a boring audit report to read, so,” his fingers slid into the still damp hair at the nape of her neck, and he came back for a longer kiss, taking his time to really taste her mouth. Her hand flattened on his chest and he started to back off, shuddering when one of the fingernails scraped his nipple. 

She took a quick step back and gave him a cheeky grin. “Have fun with that.”

“Tease.”

She laughed, bolting when he came after her. She didn’t make it to the elevator before he got his arm around her waist. “Come back after lunch?”

She gave a small shake of her head. “Yes, but it’s a girl thing. Lunch and mall time. Could be hours,” she explained. 

“Okay,” he let her go, but not before he copped a feel. “I’m getting lucky tonight,” he told her. 

“Barring save the world priorities,” Chloe agreed.

“Pfft,” he used his thumb to point behind him. “Back of the line.”

She rolled her eyes, but her smile was like sunshine. “I’ll be back,” she promised. 

 

“Dating is really . . . weird,” Courtney said as they looked at dresses on a clearance rack in a store that Courtney was skeptical about her ability to afford. “A dress?” her nose wrinkled. “Really?”

Chloe paused, looking over at her. “Dinner and a movie—“ she frowned. “You’re right. Jeans, t-shirt, and a cool jacket,” she said, recalibrating from twenty-three going on twenty-eight to Courtney’s sixteen and not trying to look older.

“This is dinner and movie if you are dating Carter,” Courtney said in a tone that substituted Carter for ‘really old guy’. “I think this dinner is probably in the Yum family of fast food restaurants.”

Chloe sighed. “I kind of suck at this,” she said.

“No, no,” Courtney refuted. “I mean, this,” she held up a wrap dress in a bold graphic print on an aubergine jersey, “gorgeous,” she said with a sigh. “You should see if it is in your size. With heels and a great necklace—you always have the best accessories.”

Flattered by the fashion kudos, Chloe gave the dress a second look and smiled. “I like it.”

“And it’s on sale,” Courtney pointed out. “You probably shop in the short people section, huh?” she guessed.

Chloe just shook her head, returned the dress to the rack, and linked arms with the taller teenager. ”We short people call it petites,” she said. “It just sounds less condescending.”

“Unlike Juniors, which is totally patronizing,” Courtney said.

“True,” Chloe agreed. “So, dating?”

Courtney frowned. “Yeah! How is it that I can go out with a guy who is almost two years older than me, and still feel like I’m older than he is?”

Chloe nodded. “I think that’s just being a teenage girl.”

“Really?”

Chloe gave her a sympathetic look. “Do you like him?”

“He’s cute, and he’s really smart.” Courtney gave it further thought. “It helps a lot that he clearly thinks I’m . . . you know . . .”

“Cute and smart?” Chloe put in. 

“Doesn’t that sound like it’s all about how great I am?” Courtney wondered. 

Chloe laughed. “Having the good sense to see how awesome you are is an attractive quality. Usually underrated by teenage girls.”

Courtney grinned. “I’m very mature for my age,” she agreed.

 

With her new dress over her shoulder and a shopping bag in hand, Chloe let herself in Oliver’s penthouse. He was standing in front of the clock tower face with his arms across his chest and his gaze on the floor. Seeing her, he gave her a little nod.

On the phone, she deduced, taking her dress and bag up to his bedroom, not before hearing his end of the conversation resume in German. Not for the first time she felt a pang of uneasiness about abandoning her studies at Met U. She was a college drop out. It was an extremely sore subject with her father. She knew enough Spanish to get by, but she was far from fluent, and she didn’t use it enough to improve. One of the things that had surprised her about being around Oliver more was that there were some gaping holes in her overall understanding of how things worked.

After he made her understand the problems that her embezzlement created, he let it drop, but she knew that he was still dealing with it months later. Lex might have been able to make her indiscretion disappear, but Queen Industries was a different company with a profoundly different corporate culture. Oliver couldn’t just threaten people to drop it or be fired without violating the norms of the company his family had created and nurtured. Not surprisingly, Luthor Corp was not a model for good corporate governance and accountability to its employees, stockholder, and board of directors.

She hung her dress up and got out of her boots. Oliver’s bathroom was probably her favorite thing about his penthouse after the view from the balcony. From the bedroom, there was a long narrow dressing room with a spacious marble topped double sink split by a lower countertop that served as a vanity with a small chair neatly tucked in under the counter. The closet built into the wall facing the vanity was very organized, floor to ceiling with drawers, a pair of tall cedar lined cabinets with shelves, two open sections for garments on hangers. The overall effect was clean and functional, but the luster of cherry finishes on the cabinetry, a beautifully restored hand planed wood floor, a thick throw rug, lots of indirect lighting and big mirrors over the countertop, and soothing blue and sea foam green in the color scheme made it relaxing and beautiful. 

She ran her fingers through her hair, turning on the hot water to wash her make-up off. She was about to go find Oliver when he came in through the bedroom. “Hi,” he said, sitting on the counter while she was in the middle of slathering her face with moisturizer. He nodded, familiar with her little beauty regimen. “Wow. The pink goo. Big plans? Are we going to exfoliate?” he asked with a wolfish grin.

Oliver had discovered her melon pink bath gloves were good for more than removing dead skin cells. Stretched over his large hands, they were sublimely rough. Chloe felt her body reacting to the memory of how he had used her gloves, careful at first, washing her with her body soap, then using them on her nipples with the lightest pressure, soothing her with his mouth when her overstimulated nipples became too sensitive. 

She looked over at him. “One of these days, you are going to say something like that. My eyes are going to cross, and they’ll be stuck that way.”

He laughed. “Imagine the disability claim. Permanent expression of post orgasm bliss.”

She snorted. “Right. Maybe they will name it after you? Oliver Queen Syndrome?”

He frowned. “No. That makes me sound like a disease,” he complained. “It has to be a cool name, or in Japanese, because everything in Japanese sounds more cool.”

She soaked a washcloth with hot water, squeezing out the excess water with a slight wince at the heat before spreading the washcloth open and pressing it to her face. 

Now he winced. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

Her agreement was somewhat muffled. She carefully wiped the excess moisturizer away without scrubbing, then rinsed and repeated the treatment after shutting the hot water off. The second rinse was tepid, and the third was downright cold.

Her only post Brainiac side effects were occasional bouts of light sensitivity when she was tired, and headaches. She had been reluctant to seek medical advice about her headaches. Brainiac had been removed, without her consent when a team of superheroes from the distant future sucked him out through her pores. She wasn’t eager to let amateurs going poking around her brain after that. Eventually, she confided in Emil, who at least distinguished himself by acknowledging that his medical credentials could only carry him so far when it came to alien tech. Their team doctor did a work-up and scheduled a MRI. The imaging didn’t reveal any problems, and Emil suggested that she eliminate caffeine from her diet, and add sleep to her schedule. 

Since that was simply not an option, Chloe found other therapies, like her mini-facial, and taking a break to walk to get her coffee, though the walk and fresh air part of that probably would have made others snicker. She was spending less time on the road to and from Smallville—and she knew it was time to cut that cord. Being with Oliver; whatever she paid for that in the future, was worth it she thought, just before she got a hand towel thrown in her face.

She caught it and patted her face dry. 

“What are we doing tonight?” he asked. “I have an engagement that you dismiss as patrolling, I think someone who is, I don’t know, a _writer_?” he made a face at that, “is missing a chance to create poetry. _Moonlight on leather, the glitter of street lights on titanium._ There was this one time that you summed it up as, I think it was something like, the hotness that is me. You were kind of drunk though, so it was more honest than poetic.”

“You are never going to let go of that,” she sighed, smiling anyway, because she liked it when he was just messing around with her. “I was planning to run support,” she said.

“Right, then. Hungry?” he asked.

She shook her head, unfastening the button at the waistband of her skirt and then the zipper under his interested gaze. “You?”

“What else are you taking off?” he asked. 

“I bought a dress. I haven’t decided if I want to keep it.”

He gestured for her to get on with it. “I’m really good at this,” he said. “Put it on.”

A little surprised by his willingness to play fashion critic, Chloe took her top off and slid the dress out from under the plastic garment bag. The wrap part took a little figuring out. Oliver took over. He fastened the hidden button at the waist and tied off the asymmetrical sash above her hip. He straightened the shoulders, and took a step back. “Good color. Print’s not making me hate it too much. It’s too long.”

Chloe adjusted the sash. “With boots or really high heels,” she didn’t have an issue with the length. 

“Maybe if you are thirty-five and you have something to camouflage, but you don’t. And it looks okay to you, because you look good in everything.”

The look she gave him was slightly incredulous. 

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Mismatched bra and panties with wool socks. A look no one should be able to carry off. That hideous plaid coat of yours that I want to drop off the roof of a tall building, or burn—you put it on, and all I can think is that your fashion suicide mission to save the ugly clothes by making them look good may actually succeed.”

His arms went around her from behind. “It does nothing for your ass,” he said. “Take it back.”

She chewed on her lip, tilting her head to the side as he kissed her neck. His hands were busy undoing the work he had done to get her in the dress. The dress slithered over her shoulders, falling to their feet while Oliver’s hand slid inside her panties. 

“That was fast, even for you,” she said.

He hummed an appreciative note at finding that she was already wet.

Chloe caught a glimpse of them in the mirror. Oliver tended to dress very simply. T-shirt, khaki trousers or jeans , and bare feet at home. Nothing too fitted. His business attire ran to bespoke tailoring and muted earth tones. His comment about mismatched panties and bra suddenly made sense. She was wearing black panties and at the last minute had selected a beige bra that she knew would disappear under her fitted t-shirt. The black lace of her panties was stretched over Oliver’s hand as his fingers stroked her clit. She bit her lip at the picture they made. 

“Can you see what I’m doing?” he asked as his lips reached her jaw.

She nodded. His other arm wrapped around her, holding her against him. 

“Open your legs, Chloe,” he coaxed. She couldn’t see his hand, but she could feel his fingers, rubbing her clit, spreading her open, finding more of her slippery hot wetness to smear over that pulsing bundle of nerves.

“Ollie,” it took two attempts before she managed to get her hand on the back of his head—or maybe she just grabbed his ear—so she could kiss him. That was when he stopped messing around.

He let go of her when the kiss broke off to pull his own t-shirt off. “Bed,” he said. “Now, Chloe,” he added as he unbuttoned his pants, giving her a little glimpse at corporate Oliver.

She unhooked her bra, smirking at the idea of him thinking he got to order her around. He was kind of cute when he got all focused and demanding. Her hands were drawn to his chest. She loved the way he felt against the palms of her hands. His skin was hot, taut, smooth save for a few minor imperfections and scars, and he smelled like a delicious blend of clean with a faint whiff of sweat and fresh air, all percolated into a familiar and distinctive scent.

When it came to stripping, he was all speed and efficiency. No flashy moves. Trousers and boxers down. He stepped on the hem of one leg, and kicked the other off after he stepped out. His erection poked her in the stomach while her arms went up around his neck for the gratification of her nipples against his chest. 

She pulled his head down, resuming the kiss that he had ended before she was done while his hands roved down her back. 

“I’m going to fuck you right here, on the floor if you don’t get moving,” he threatened.

She laughed. “Too hard on your knees,” she said, moving with him out of the dressing room and into the bedroom. 

He pushed her backward on the bed while she was removing her socks and panties. “I liked the socks,” he said, kneeling over her, his mouth attaching to the closest nipple as his hand returned to explore between her legs, all the while urging her up to the center of the bed. 

His fingers filled her and she stopped thinking, arching her back to get more, squirming as his mouth tugged. Her nipple emerged from his mouth, standing at attention while he went for its neglected twin. There was something about the pressure of his thumb on her clitoris and the very specific way he swirled his tongue around her nipple before sucking that made her want his mouth down there. 

His fingers filled her, slow and deliberate, stroking in and out of her like he was determined not to miss a spot. She ran her fingers through his hair, opening her hand wider. The shape of his ear was traced with a fingertip, the pull of his mouth on her nipple was felt from the shape of his cheek as her thumb wandered over, stroking until she almost reached the corner of his mouth. His attention shifted to her thumb, and he bit it lightly before giving way to her exploration.

She wondered what he would do if she pushed his head down. Would he figure out what she was asking for? She traced his lower lip, blinking under his intent stare, aware of how she was riding his hand with a tight roll of her hips. Her other hand closed around his cock. He felt hot and heavy in her hand, skin pulled tight. His eyes narrowed a little as she raised her head to meet his mouth in a long, slow kiss that made her toes curl. 

His hand moved over hers, guiding her as their lips parted and he came back at a different angle to start again. The thrill of the silent exchange made her moan into his mouth. He showed her what he wanted without making her feel like she wasn’t doing it right, and then he palmed her breast a little roughly while the soles of her feet started to feel hot and tingly.

“Ollie,” she managed to get that much out. “I need—“ where to start? That burning sensation in her feet was intensifying, and as good as slow and deliberate was she needed something more. More of him.

Their lips met in a shallow kiss that ended with her lower lip caught between his as his tongue delicately traced over the surface of her lip. 

The loss of his fingers between her legs made her roll the slick crown of his cock against her palm with the same force she wanted applied as he filled her. 

“I want to fuck you. Over, baby,” his hands urged her to roll over and spread her legs, lifting her up in a way that made her aware that he was probably watching as he guided himself into her. And why not? She would have been watching too, Chloe thought dimly as he went deep in a torturously slow slide. It felt so good that she wanted to hold him there. 

“Don’t move,” she gasped. “God . . .”

His hands bracketed her hips, “Are you okay?” 

Holding her, he leaned forward to kiss her spine, and that small movement wrung a guttural sound from her as the slight movement made her shudder. 

One of his hands slid under her, pressing against her abdomen, his fingertips feathering over her clit as he started to move just a little bit. 

“Breathe,” he cajoled. “You feel so good, Chloe,” his voice was harsh with restraint. His other hand moved up her back, his fingers combing through her hair, tightening close to her scalp. “I’m going to fuck you now,” he said, easing back.

“Hard,” she begged, pushing back to meet him as he let go and set a hard, fast pace, pulling her hair a little. Oliver’s fingers trapped her clit, rubbing firmly. Her orgasm crashed over her like a tidal wave, carrying her on a rush of churning water racing for the shore. He didn’t slow down for it, or wait for her, he rode it out with her, until it sucked him in, and he poured himself into her, holding her as he finished with a few shallow thrusts that triggered a surprising, but less intense orgasm. 

He nuzzled her neck, breathing hard, and laughing a little. “Jesus. That was . . . amazing.”

With her face in the deep feather bed covering the mattress, Chloe was trying to catch her breath. She needed a nap. He eased out of her gently and hovered over her, shifting her to her side and finger combing her hair off her face until she was moved to open one eye and give him a dirty look complete with appropriate hand gesture.

“Aren’t you just full of energy,” she muttered, feeling wrung out. Maybe her second orgasm wasn’t an orgasm and more like a pre-orgasm, she thought. She still felt tingly all over. 

Stretching out beside her, he slid his arm under her neck and brought her closer to him, kissing her. “I think you are cooling down too fast,” he said, pulling the excess duvet under them over her so she was cocooned between down and his body heat. 

In reality, she was almost overheated, but willing to put up with it for at least a few more minutes. She wriggled to get more comfortable. 

“I have to go to Star City,” he said, sounding less than pleased. 

“When?” this was news to her.

“Tomorrow,” he tucked a curl behind her ear. “Come with me? And, before you say no, I already talked to Vic. He’s in Gotham. He can be here in the morning. Bart is in Keystone—“

“I have a lot going on,” she said. Security for the surviving members of the JSA, their families, and the team’s connections rolled to the top of Watchtower’s priority list in the wake of their encounter with the group. Securing the database was a close second, and she was tracking and monitoring the movements of two dozen Kandorians. 

Otherwise, it had been slow—not that either of them said that. They shared a first responder’s superstition that calling a slow period was inviting disaster.

He shook his head, “Come for the first couple of days then,” he countered. “We’ll do low-key couple-y things for verisimilitude,” he gave her a reproachful look. “Your dad thinks were dating, and while that is Lois’s fault, we went along with it so we have to wave the flag to keep it real.”

“You could always break up with me,” she said.

“How does that work? We’re not really dating,” he reminded her with a ‘gotcha’ smirk. “That makes breaking up impossible.”

She laughed and fanned herself. “I think I’m warmed up,” she said, helping him loosen the down comforter. 

“Our CIO is dying to meet you—he thinks that you are a pimply teenage master criminal from Belarus, but I’m sure he’ll get over it if you show some leg.”

Her nose wrinkled. “Is that why you have to go back to Star City?”

“No,” he shook his head. “If I thought he was getting close, that’s the last place I’d want you to be. I have nightmares about seeing you perp walked.”

She kissed his chin. “I’ve been tied-up, buried alive, and almost burned at the stake. A little prison time would be a cake-walk. You can visit. Slip me a file,” she patted his cheek. “Come on, you know a good, old fashioned prison break caper would be fun.”

He refused to be distracted. “So, what is it going to take?” he asked. “How about a day of one-on-one time with our technical innovations work group? You can put on your reporter hat for a day and find out what the rest of the world will consider indispensable in five years or less?”

He was dragging out the heavy artillery. “Tempting,” she admitted, searching for his hand and threading her fingers through his. “I need a little more time,” she said. “It was never really about other people knowing,” she said slowly, testing the idea. 

“Okay,” he said, giving her his acceptance and understanding.

 

A few days later Oliver texted her a picture he took from his city. He was getting sentimental, collecting pictures, storing memories. Dinah sent him a picture taken on his phone of Chloe sitting in his lap at her birthday party with her head thrown back, laughing. It was the first really good picture he had of them together, and he was surprised how compelling it was. He sent it to be printed and framed.

He was glad that Chloe’s uneasiness about the meanings in gifts had restrained his tendency to indulge in the gesture that expressed caring. He almost bought her a car for her birthday to replace her Yaris. He even had it narrowed down to a Lexus hybrid, an Audi A4, or a Volvo C30, and went so far as to call a dealership in Metropolis to schedule an appointment, when he made himself stop. 

He had thought about how to give her the money she had spent on the weapons back, and along with it, to get her money out of Watchtower, but he couldn’t figure out a way to do it without diminishing her contribution. She didn’t need any of those things, and she didn’t need him to acquire things for her.

As much as he had wanted her to come with him, he decided that the time apart wasn’t a bad thing. They were on the thin edge of where his relationship history took a sour turn. He had derailed his relationship with Tess because it had gone from being his safe harbor when he returned from the island to the thing that threatened to overwhelm him. With Lois, he bailed as soon as he understood that she could never compete with his need to do more than just be a reasonably ethical and philanthropic businessman. 

He couldn’t see what was going to be his downfall with Chloe, but he thought it would have something to do with his tendency to hold back at the wrong time. He had known for months that she didn’t ask him for the money to build her Kryptonian arsenal because deep down, she expected him to turn her down, and it was easier to work around that than endure being denied.

When he was stuck in the Talon basement with Davis and Jimmy, he understood where Jimmy was coming from. He had been lied to consistently about things that affected him every day. Chloe and Clark hid huge portions of their lives from him. Chloe was harder for him to understand in that moment. 

The clear alternative to being with her was unacceptable, which meant that eventually she was going to do something that was going to feel like betrayal, and he was going to have to take a leap of faith and trust her.

His trip home got extended into the weekend, and then into a previously scheduled trip to Gotham for a meeting with Bruce Wayne. 

The two-year age gap that had separated them in school had never really closed despite the fact that they had a lot in common, even then. One of the tabloids had put them on the same cover once with the headline: Billionaire Orphan Boys Club. It was the kind of fake connection that always made him angry. As far as Oliver could tell, they had nothing in common. Bruce lived in the family mansion. He was a cold, controlled, closed-off man who participated in the world just enough to avoid being openly criticized. 

He was also, probably, Gotham’s vigilante, or the bankroll that supported Gotham’s Batman. It was the only reason Oliver accepted the invitation to his annual fundraiser for the Gotham PD’s widows and orphans fund. He had a thumb drive of information on Checkmate that Chloe had prepared, and a good idea that the high profile Batman was probably on Amanda Waller’s wish list.

Victor was on the guest list, too. Oliver met him while he was waiting for a drink at the bar outside the ballroom. 

“You look like you’d rather be anywhere else,” Victor told him. “Stop scowling at people, Ollie.”

“How do you want to play this?” Oliver asked.

Victor nodded. “Lucius Fox,” he said, naming the head of Wayne Enterprises applied science division. “Gut feeling.”

Oliver pulled out his phone and texted their host asking for fifteen minutes with him and Mr. Fox.

A few minutes later, he spotted Bruce making his way towards him. “Oliver,” he extended his hand for a brief handshake. “If this can wait until tomorrow, you’re welcome to stay the night.”

Victor shook his head. “No, that’s probably not going to work. Ollie’s got a thing he has to get to in Metropolis. I’m Victor Stone, Mr. Wayne,” he added. 

A coolly assessing look followed. “Do I know her?”

Oliver took a deep breath. “No,” he slipped the waiter bringing his drink a tip, and held up his glass. “Fifteen minutes, and I’m out of here before the ice melts.”

“You should have brought her,” Bruce said.

“Maybe next year,” Oliver offered. “Do you have a few minutes?” he asked. 

Bruce nodded, gesturing to the door. He paused to speak to a young woman who listened intently and strolled off. 

“Liza is asking Lucius to meet us in my study,” he explained as they walked. “I saw that you managed to get Luthor Corp untangled from the disaster with their Geo-thermal plant,” he remarked. “That was a nicely done.”

“We had some good people working on it,” Oliver said. “Ground breaking is scheduled for this summer.”

Victor trailed behind them, discreetly checking his own internal server’s message feed when a Watchtower alert chimed to let him know that the system resources were being taxed for a complex scan. 

Lucius Fox joined them and he shut down the feed to concentrate. 

“Is this room secure?” Oliver asked.

Bruce was unruffled by the question. “It is,” he said.

“There is a government agency tasked to recruit people with special abilities,” Oliver began. “Luthor Corp, during Lionel and Lex Luthor’s leadership, took an unhealthy interest in people with special abilities—“

“The so-called Meteor infected?” Lucius Fox interjected with a small nod. “We’ve heard rumors,” he allowed.

“They have people placed in the public and private sector, and this organization is particularly interested in vigilantes—“

Bruce’s expression reflected polite amusement. “The costumed crusaders? You have one in Star City, and a couple in Metropolis.”

Victor nodded. “Your guy in Gotham uses tools that could be linked to proprietary technologies developed by Wayne Enterprises, Queen Industries, and STAR Labs. That’s why we are here, sharing what we know about their methods and motivations. They are dangerous. We’ve had several deaths in Metropolis linked to their activities,” he said, looking over at Oliver.

Oliver nodded, producing the thumb drive. 

Bruce took it, turning it over in his fingers. “Luthor Corp is out of the business of trying to exploit these people?”

“Absolutely,” Oliver said.

Victor flinched. His Watchtower alert hit an internal pitch that was giving him a bad feeling. 

Oliver’s phone started buzzing a few seconds later. 

Ollie nodded, “I hate to cut this short, but that’s a call I need to take,” he said smoothly. “Victor? If you have a moment, walk out with me,” he offered his hand to Lucius Fox. “Pleasure. My father was an admirer of your work, sir,” he said. It was an off-hand comment that he had used over the years when dealing with people his father would have done business with.

When they were out on the stairs, heading down to the first floor, Victor started accessing his feed. 

Oliver checked his phone. Watchtower had four levels of lock down status, sending an alert to a select group when a level 2 lockdown occurred. Level 2 locked everyone but Chloe and Victor out of the system.

Oliver dialed Chloe. Her phone rang four times before rolling to voice mail. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Call me when you get this.”

He texted his pilot to tell him that he was on the way and he wanted to be in the air as soon as possible.

“Vic—“

“I’m accessing the video,” Victor said quietly.

Oliver looked over at him. “You can do that?”

Victor glowered. “Man, I try to avoid it as much as possible,” he assured him. “I go to audio with a ten second delay for video.”

Oliver thought about that. “Chloe—“

“I haven’t told her,” Victor said. “But, the rest of us work there—“ he left the rest unsaid.

Oliver passed the valet a twenty to get his driver, trying to reign in his impatience.

“Bullet points? Boy Scout found our pointy sticks. He and Chloe had words. Mostly he had words about being betrayed and then he burned his shield on the wall and jetted.”

Oliver started to ask where Chloe was, but Victor gave him a stop signal with his hand. “I’m texting and talking at the same time. I’m Watchtower right now.”

His driver pulled the town car around and Oliver headed down the stairs. Victor got in with him. “Airport,” Oliver told him before raising the partition. 

“I’ve got Manhunter, Impulse, and Canary on stand-by,” he said, staring fixedly into the middle distance of a complicated array of data, streaming video, and texts from multiple parties. “Okay. Red-K? Um . . . Chloe is following up on that. She’s not hurt—“

“She’s not . . . why would—“

“Kent kind of gave her a,” Victor made a pushing away gesture. “Damn! Decoy one is down,” he said. “From the thermal readings, I’m calling it as Boy Scout.”

Chloe was the one who knew what the different types of kryptonite did. All Oliver knew was that red was bad. “Ask her what Red-K does—“his phone was ringing, and he picked it up when he saw that it was Chloe.

“Chloe?”

“Stay put,” she said. “Let me figure out how to fix this.”

“No,” he shook his head. ”Do what you have to, but I’m not waiting around. I’m in Gotham, I’ll be in Metropolis in two hours. Coordinate with Vic.”

“Right,” she said. “I’ve got to go.”

“Be safe.”

 

Oliver was waiting for him at the farmhouse on the porch. Clark’s expression was complicated, but guilt was apparent.

“You know why I’m here?”

“Chloe called you?”

Oliver massaged his own forehead. How was it that being mad at Clark when he had every right to be mad, and Clark knew it felt like kicking a puppy? “Why am I here, Clark?”

Clark scowled. “I don’t know. Kryptonite weapons? You and Chloe just decided—on your own--“

“Step twelve in our evil plot to take over the world,” Oliver said sarcastically. “Or, oh, yeah, maybe it’s a _never to be used unless your Kandorian buddies get their powers and have to be stopped on their quest to become the masters of the planet_ back-up plan?”

Clark had the good grace to look ashamed. “Oh,” he said, followed by, “I kind of knew that,” he admitted. “From Lois’s trip to the future.”

“A detail you happened to omit in the re-telling of the story,” Oliver pointed out.

Clark opened his mouth and then shut it. He sat on the porch rail. “Zod has powers,” he volunteered, in case Oliver wasn’t up to speed on that.

It was Oliver’s turn to restrain himself from saying something unhelpful, like putting last year’s ‘what are you going to do?’ refrain on repeat.

He laced his fingers together. “We’ll figure this out, because that’s what we do, and in the meantime, you _will_ fix this shit with Chloe. Does Zod know who she is? Or how to get to her?”

“I don’t think he’s ready for that kind of open warfare yet, and I’m not going to let anything happen to her.”

“Oh, Clark, you better mean that, because I will hold you accountable,” Oliver told him. “She’s busy cleaning up your mess, so—“

“Yeah,” Clark nodded. “I’ll go help. I need to talk to her anyway. To apologize,” he clarified. “What are you going to do?”

“Build a mouse trap,” Oliver said.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Link to banner: http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/bkwurm1/12629216/21405/21405_900.jpg

Oliver measured progress by how lucid he was when he woke up. The memory of the stink of burning and barbequed Oliver had become more and more like a nightmarish hallucination. He had a mental white board with his greatest hits of _actual_ hallucinations. Waking under a brilliant white light with a helicopter hovering nearby, or desperately searching for an ugly baby covered in hair that he had somehow misplaced, or oversharing about his dream about taking the elevator down and finding that he was surrounded by shark infested water. Again, that was the least of his problems when he realized that he misplaced the baby.

It sucked that his subconscious was so literal. Or obsessed with babies. 

Rubbing his face, he grimaced. Since the island, he never went more than a week without shaving, and he was due. Blinking, he stared at his own hand for a moment, wiggling his fingers while his other hand gingerly patted his chest.

He closed his eyes. He tried to remember what woke him up. Aside from the bright light and the helicopter. No, wait, that wasn’t it. Bright lights and helicopter, then the craptasic feeling of having let down the side when he couldn’t find his ugly baby, followed by having to ask his unfeeling and cruel friends to stop mocking him to help him find the baby, and then . . .

His hand drifted downward. Oh, yeah. He’d been getting a foot massage. He was an addict now. Craving the foot massage. He relaxed, smiling.

“ _Whoa!_.”

It should have been like a nightmare, but even before he opened his eyes, he knew that it wasn’t. Oliver’s opened one eye, hoping that he wasn’t going to see Bart Allen was sitting on his bed, shaking his head.

“It’s still attached, man,” Bart told him, giving him a goofy thumbs up.

He was awake? Going off the bad taste in his mouth, Oliver was ready to say that he was. He’d prefer to be unconscious.

“I’m hallucinating,” he said hopefully.

He vaguely remembered Emil telling him that the drugs had something to do with that. He had been hyper aware of how likely it was that he was about to be doped up after they admitted him to the hospital. Not _opposed_ to it, because he was a little worried about the extended twilight period that he was experiencing between being burned and waking with Clark carrying him. Minor injuries tended to hurt right away. Major injuries were sometimes disguised by the lack of pain commiserate with the seriousness of the injury. 

Logic told him that he was badly injured, but if he was wrong and all he needed was a shower, a cold beer, and a change of clothes to get away from the smell that was making him feel sick he was prepared to accept that.

Before the opiates came out to play, he wanted . . . Chloe. He wanted to know exactly where she was. The difference between knowing that they were in danger if the Kandorians had Clark’s abilities, and the experiencing how much in danger they were in transferred to Chloe with all of the terrifying possibilities fresh in his mind. 

The relief of seeing her, even if she looked scared and furious, was one of the last truly coherent memories he had. Emil warned him that some of the drugs that they would use would interfere with his memory. It didn’t make him forget what put him in the hospital, but his memory of what happened after Chloe was at his bedside was a big confusing mess. It felt a little like someone had taken puzzle pieces from different puzzles and thrown them all together. Some pieces fit. Others clearly did not belong, and others could belong if he figured out what he was looking at. 

Emil was at the foot of the bed reviewing his chart.

Mia threw off a blanket, getting up out of a chair that folded out to make a narrow bed. She had static-y bed head and she was yawning as she stumbled to the nightstand to pour a cup of water for him. 

Or _not_. She sipped the water, finger combing her hair. Given what a mess it was, she was probably going to be busy for a while, he decided. 

He was going to take a wild guess that nursing was not going to be a future profession for Mia.

“I feel like shit,” he told Emil bluntly.

“You need to eat and sleep,” Emil was unconcerned by his show of temper. 

The narrative to his weird lost ugly baby dream tumbled out of his mouth with no filter. 

Bart, Mia and Emil looked at him, unsurprised. No one was laughing. “I know, I’m hallucinating,” he said.

“You are tripping like a—“

Emil shook his head at Mia. “It’s Wednesday morning, Oliver,” he tilted his head, keeping his voice soothingly calm, “You are at MetGen. It’s been two days since you were injured in a confrontation with Zod.”

Oliver frowned. He understood the ‘head tilt to contemplative empathy’ from somewhere, and then it came to him. Emil claiming that he practiced looking overwhelmed with compassion. 

“You’ve been under heavy sedation. At this moment, you are—“

“Thanks, Gandalf.” He glared at Emil. “I don’t mean right _now_. Obviously, I’m hallucinating about having an ugly, hairy baby.”

“That you _love_ ,” Mia slipped in with a smirk.

Oliver transferred his bad temper to her, and then the humor of it reached him and the corner of his mouth twitched into a smile. 

Oliver pointed to the water pitcher. “Thirsty?” he asked her. “Because, I’m thinking that Bart won’t mind getting you something to drink. Or eat. I’d hate to be a bad host at my first post-roast gathering.”

Bart whooshed out and Mia took a hint and poured a glass of water for him. She even helpfully bent his straw before giving to him. Bart whooshed back in with a tray of food. A ticket from the tray fluttered to the floor.

The cold water helped clear some of the cobwebs. His head felt like it weighed five pounds more than normal. The smell of food made Oliver’s stomach growl. He found the remote for the bed and the motor groaned to life.

Mia made a face of ‘aw’ for him. “I got you a present,” she said, holding up her phone.

He traded his water for the phone and found a camera roll of Chloe waking up. She started off sleepy and confused, and then there was a hand in the camera and a scowl, and in the last picture, a sheet pulled over her head. 

Mollified for the moment, he passed the phone back. “Send this to me?”

“Done,” she said serenely. “Like I want your girlfriend’s naked pictures on my phone,” she scoffed.

Emil suppressed a smile. “Your ugly baby hallucination may have been my fault,” he said. “You kept trying to pull out your IVs, so I thought if we told you that you had to hold something and keep it safe, that it might keep your hands off your lines.”

Bart had moved the tray table in front of him while his bed motored with painful slowness into an upright position. Oliver registered IV, plural. He didn’t really want to know, did he? He was more focused on finding a fork. 

“Little bears,” she held up one. Approximately hand sized, and a little squashed, it was a very hairy blue bear. “It worked,” Mia told him. She sounded moderately impressed. 

Oliver frowned. He wanted to complain about the color, but he was really hungry. “Why am I not _‘argh’_ ” he mimed rage. He had a million questions, and he was starving. 

Bart was busy texting while they talked. “Gotta jet. Glad you aren’t crispy, boss,” he said with a wave that wasn’t complete before he was gone. 

“That little bastard stole my French toast,” Oliver griped. For a second, psychotic rage seemed like a real possibility, and then it was as if his brain got a shower of calmness. It smelled like mown grass and cookies.

For a moment, he just stared vacantly into space. Then Clark knocked on the door, waving through the half opened blinds. Oliver found his happy place when he spotted a set of utensils in Clark’s hand.

“Ran into Bart,” he explained, handing the utensils over to Oliver. He gave Mia a nod.

“Timely,” Oliver complimented. 

“Eat. I’ll fill you in,” Emil said. “We’ve been working on the RL-65 formula for some time, with very little success, but we still had some of the original serum in storage. You were already under heavy sedation, and we knew that it would work, so . . . I’m still on your advance directive—which you need to change,” Emil said pointedly. 

“You’re my physician, and one of my best friends,” Oliver said. “You talked it over with Chloe?”

“Of course. She wasn’t 100% on board with the idea, but she understood why I made the decision and I expressed my confidence that we would be able to manage the side effects.”

“Were there any?” Oliver contemplated rolling a pancake up and eating it, and decided to stick with the knife and fork. 

Emil’s eyes wandered skyward. “Yes,” he said. “I was a little concerned about some unforeseen drug interactions.”

There was a little bowl of fruit. He pointed at the pancakes. “Light on the butter and syrup, please,” he said to Mia as he started on the fruit.

“It was awesome,” Mia told him, scrapping a pat of butter on his pancakes and adding a tiny amount of syrup. “You turned green, ripped through your clothes, and destroyed a vending machine. You ate a half a dozen bags of Gardettos before we took you down.”

Oliver inhaled a blueberry and choked on it.

“That isn’t funny,” Emil scolded her while she cackled gleefully at Oliver’s alarmed expression. 

Clark cracked a smile. “It kind of was,” he argued, trying not to laugh.

“She wasn’t there, and none of that happened,” Emil said. “Your vitals were causing me some concern, and you had tachycardia—for about twenty hours, which was alarming. Combined with the fluid loss from the burns, it was a lot of stress on your heart, liver, and kidneys, but we got that under control.”

Oliver swallowed half a glass of water to recover from his choking fit. “It feels like you poured sand down my throat.”

“You were intubated,” Emil said, refraining from mentioning that Oliver had non-verbally complained about it non-stop from before he was intubated until it was removed yesterday. 

Oliver nodded. He pointed at Mia with his fork. “Lump of coal. Look it up.”

She smiled sweetly. “Probably worth it,” she said, rising. “I’m going to make you a smoothie,” she went out to the family relief lounge.

Oliver grimaced. “Looking forward to that,” he called after her. 

Emil looked apologetic. “It’ll be full of TraumaCal and it will taste like concentrated baby formula, but you need to drink it. She thinks she can make it palatable, but it is not remotely possible. One a day for a week. If I hadn’t known what RL-65 could do, I wouldn’t have believed it. That was a full thickness burn Oliver. The damage was well into muscle tissue. Your normal recovery time would have been two months in skilled care and another year in physical therapy. If you weren’t as healthy as you are, the amount of IV sedation we had to use to keep you down would have killed you.”

Oliver nodded. “Uh . . .” was it weird that he was ready to fist pump his awesome conditioning? Yeah, a little. He kept a lid on that, as well as the fact that the first place his brain went upon waking was to feel himself up. He was sure that Bart was already sharing that with their mutual friends. “Thanks?”

“I am sorry. I thought that you would want me to explore any option that would get you back on your feet in the shortest possible time frame.”

Oliver nodded. “Because, that’s correct, and I’m not . . . brain damaged? Or,” he waved with his fork. “Everything works, right?”

“No more than you were to start with,” Emil frowned at him. “What’s wrong with you people? I bare my soul to you about my failure as your physician to follow best practice, risking your life, and what do I get?” he asked rhetorically. “Jokes.”

Oliver shoveled more pancake into his mouth and tried to look sympathetic. He was. Their friends needed some work on pretending to be compassionate. He was tempted to put Emil in charge of that. Occupied with chewing, he held up two fingers and mimed, “really?”

Emil nodded. “You probably want to know what is going on?”

Oliver nodded. The sun was yellow, nothing was on fire, and Clark had cracked a genuine smile so he was feeling mildly optimistic about the possibility that their own man in black went medieval on Zod’s ass. After the epic beat down, they would have hugged it out and Zod would have hung up his megalomania to go frolic in a field of daisies. Yep, not a chance in hell that that happened, he decided. 

“Zod got away,” Clark started with that.

He chewed and swallowed. “I remember that,” he said. Clark carried him to Metropolis. He did a hand rolling gesture. “After that it’s a little vague.”

“Zod went after Checkmate. The Kandorians disappeared. Chloe located them up north and Clark made another attempt to talk them down, but was ultimately unable to persuade anyone to change sides.”

Oliver swallowed his disappointment, holding his hand up. “Did anyone that I don’t like get their ass handed to them?” he asked.

Emil and Clark exchanged looks. “Not exactly—“ Emil began.

Clark made a face. “Checkmate? Zod wiped the floor with _them_.”

Oliver did a little back and forth with his head. He didn’t like Checkmate, but he didn’t like them a lot less than he didn’t like Zod, so that didn’t put him in a happy place.

“Chloe killed Tess, but she brought her back,” Emil expanded on his ‘not really’. 

Clark looked like he was questioning the wisdom of sharing that development. “It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. Tess ambushed Chloe at Watchtower—“

After all the time and money spent to secure Watchtower, Mercy beat their security? When he told Chloe that she needed to take seriously the idea that Tess was smarter than her, he didn’t think that Tess was going to out-smart him too. That stung. 

“Watchtower locked down with them inside because Tess had a tracker on her and Checkmate was piggybacking the signal to hack the database,” Emil explained. “Chloe had anticipated an attack from inside Watchtower, so she programed a lockout, which was so effective that she and Tess were sealed in.”

“They escaped by using the coolant to freeze the metal and then shattered it,” Emil continued. “In order to keep Checkmate from apprehending Tess, who knows too much, Chloe brought her to MetGen and used a defibrillator to stop her heart. The tracking devise was disabled.”

Oliver and Clark exchanged complicated looks over the failure of their hastily thrown together plan to keep Chloe out of the line of fire. Oliver decided to be magnanimous. “Fine. Keeping Chloe out of the line of fire is easier said than done,” he allowed.

“The main thing is that she’s okay,” Clark said. “The only reason she isn’t here now is that Watchtower was trashed and she’s been putting it back together.”

Mia left her phone, so he went back to her Chloe camera roll again until he found his favorite picture. He held it up. “She’s okay?”

“Putting Watchtower back together. Victor is here, and Dinah flew in last night to help,” Clark reported. “Bart is running errands for her, and—“

Oliver stopped him with a look. “Thanks for the battle status report, man. Is _Chloe_ okay?”

Emil pretended a renewed interest in his chart.

“Would you be?” Clark asked.

Mia returned with the smoothie and he didn’t get past the smell. 

“No,” he shook his head. “Get me some clothes.”

“Oliver,” Emil gave him a look.

The smell was making his stomach cramp. “Projectile vomiting will follow,” he predicted. “I need a shower, and then I’m getting out of here. Get me something for motion sickness.”

 

Oliver thought he’d get to spend one night in his own bed, but when he saw the state of Watchtower, over Chloe’s shoulder, he mentally scrapped that plan. Clark was due at any minute to run him to Star City. 

When she came by last night, he looked better and was semi-conscious. Before that? The first twenty-four hours, before Emil and Jonn figured out a way to work around the side effects so Emil could administer the RL-65 had been frightening. The burn was bad on its own. Even with Emil warning her about what would happen next, she had been unprepared for the impact of seeing him struggle to breath with the onset of edema. Within twelve hours he was alarmingly swollen and Emil felt that they had reached the point where RL-65 had to be administered to head off complications.

Just because it was a survivable injury didn’t mean that it wasn’t a serious one.

In addition to sedation, Jonn stayed with him, using his abilities to help Oliver ride out the adrenal overload. Emil administered the RL-65 in a drip. It was slower and less dramatic, and for a few tense hours, it didn’t appear to be working.

Going to him now, Chloe laid her hands on his chest, and her knees nearly went on at the wave of relief she felt to find the effects of the injury so completely undone. 

“Hey,” he said softly. “You weren’t worried, were you?”

Tears welled up and her smile, her brilliant, beautiful smile, wobbled.

He bit his own wobbly lip, and they exchanged awkwardly smiles at how fraught the moment was with the weight of things neither of them had time to say. 

It took him a moment to gain enough composure to say, “I have to go to—“

Her eyes closed and a couple of tears slipped out. 

He carefully wiped them away with his thumbs. “Timing sucks.”

“Ollie—“

He touched her lips, shaking his head. “We’re going to save this for later? Because . . . if you say what I think you are going to say, I’m not going to be able to leave.”

She took a deep breath, nodding. 

 

He spent most of the day coordinating the resources that Victor and Chloe needed for the Watchtower re-build—with a few refinements of his own. Emil’s reminder to update his advance directive had him calling his personal attorney to deal with than and add a brief and incredibly comprehensive codicil to his will. 

He worked until eight and went to his condo in the city to work on a couple of letters. He had not been able to locate Tess, and it bothered him. She was in as much, if not more danger, from the Kandorians and Checkmate as any of them. No matter how smart and how capable Tess was, she made the kind of decisions that were hard to come back from. If he hadn’t been so angry after Checkmate took Chloe, he might have figured out a way to help her. 

It was nearly one in the morning when he got a video conference request from Watchtower. Considering the shape he found it in this morning, he should have been more surprised. 

This was why Oliver greeted her when they were connected via video conference with, “First thing we have to do is get you a cool costume.”

Chloe tilted her head. He was bare-chested. “Really Oliver? I could just wear your shirt.”

“Hmm,” he stroked his healed skin. “Could work. Little green leather mini dress? How do you feel about Green Arrow Girl as a code name?” Before she could say anything he shook his head. “Flechette?”

She laughed at him. “You are obviously feeling better,” she concluded.

He patted his unscarred chest. “Impressed?”

“Always,” she drawled. His mood was catching. “How do you really feel?”

“Relieved,” he said. “My back up career is golfer/underwear model.” 

“You’re going to need a billion dollars to fix up the house, aren’t you?”

She sighed. “It feels like it,” she admitted. “We’re getting there. When are you coming home?”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “When was the last time you had some sleep?”

“Bart brought a pizza, and I passed out on the couch for a couple of hours. I’m getting ready to take a break, but I wanted to see you before I went to bed.”

 

 

When he arrived in Metropolis, Chloe was there in her crappy little car, sleeping so soundly that when he opened the door to wake her up, she looked like she was going to cry. 

He let Chloe sleep in the next morning. It required a conference call to tell everyone to leave them the hell alone. He felt a little manic. Emil thought it was a lingering side effect from the RL-65 and he prescribed a tranquilizer to help him sleep, but Oliver was reluctant to take it. He put the energy to good use steadying the corporate ship, and getting some feelers out to see if anyone in the government had twigged to the impending doom. 

Tess had left an email to tell him that she was unavailable, but checking in with her team. 

His ‘joke’ about giving Chloe a satellite and naming it after her, was settling into orbit. It dawned on him that he was working through a list. 

Before he left Star City, he went to the bank to get into the safety deposit box where his mother’s personal jewelry was stored after her death. Her wedding and engagement rings were with her, but his father had given her a pendant for their tenth anniversary with a large diamond, and he was looking for that necklace. There were a few boxes inside the safety deposit box with notes in his mother or his father’s handwriting. They hadn’t been living their lives like they were about to end. 

There was no note that said something like ‘for Oliver to give to someone he would have wanted us to know’. 

He found the necklace in a little cloth box that he remembered seeing on his mother’s vanity. With it was an eternity band that he didn’t remember seeing before, and the first piece of jewelry he had ever picked out for a woman, back in his ladies-man-in-training days.

It was a bracelet of freshwater pearls strung on elastic in thick clusters. He remembered seeing it and asking his dad if they could buy it for his mother. She wore it regularly, even though it was bulky, and he used to slip his fingers inside the bracelet when she had it on her wrist.

He pocketed the bracelet, and put the necklace back. 

It was sitting on his desk when Chloe came out with a cup of coffee in hand, finger combing her hair, wearing his discarded shirt from yesterday and a pair of sleep shorts. He took the envelopes for the letters he had written, to Tess, Emil, Clark, and Chloe, and placed them in the drawer.

“It’s almost eleven. When I woke up, I thought the world ended.” She came over to lean against the edge of his desk. “Hi!” she said brightly.

“Hi,” he leaned back. “You look amazing.”

“Back at you, Mr. Queen,” she set her coffee cup down and leaned forward to kiss him. “Miss me?”

“You have to ask?” Oliver tugged her down in his lap. “Like you would not believe.”

She combed her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. “Watchtower is ready to go,” she said. “Emil says that you are 100%.”

He touched her mouth, shaking his head. “Give me a few more minutes of just you and me before we bring the rest of the world into it.”

She shook her head. “Can’t do it,” she said with an apologetic shrug. “I’ve got a million things to do before dinner. With the team deploying, we are going to the mattresses, I volunteered you for the night shift with me at Watchtower,” she smiled. “Pack an overnight bag, and don’t forget your toothbrush, Ollie. Worst comes, we’ll subsist on bottled water and pop-tarts.”

He chuckled. “Tradeoff is I get you all to myself?” he pretended to think about that. “Okay.”

Her hands slipped from the back of his neck to the side of his face, which led to more kissing, until Chloe remembered that she really did have stuff to do. “I’m meeting Lois for lunch,” she said. “She doesn’t know anything about your—“ she waved to his chest. “So, if you run into her, you were called away suddenly on business,” she said as she got up. 

Back to Watchtower? He could work with that, he decided, giving her a few minutes head start on pulling herself together. He picked up the bracelet and followed her back to the bedroom. She was already half dressed in khaki capri pants and a purple top embellished at the neckline. Bent over at the waist, she was vigorously finger-combing product into her hair, straightening abruptly with a startled squeal when he pinched her bottom.

“Oliver,” she scolded half-heartedly. 

His vanity looked like a cosmetics counter had exploded. “I’ve been staying here since you were in Star City,” she said. “Sorry. It’s been crazy.”

“It’s okay,” he said as she swept things into bags. 

“Are you going to work today?” she asked as he opened one of the folding closet doors.

“Yeah, I’ve got some stuff to take care of,” he said, wrapping his arm around her neck to kiss the top of her head. “As appealing as pop-tarts are, I think I’ll bring dinner,” he offered.

“Good plan,” she nodded. “Pack a couple of towels too. We have towels at Watchtower, but you’ve spoiled me and now I can’t go back to my towels.”

He brightened up. “Hey! I forgot all about the bathroom renovation. Yeah! We need towels. You probably desperately need to be exfoliated, too,” he said, backing her into the folded closet door.

She shook her head. “Save it for later?”

He heaved a put-upon sigh. “Fine. Towels, and the finest bath products. Food. What else?”

“You,” she said.

He nodded, before she slipped away, he held up the bracelet. When she didn’t launch into her non-relationship manifesto, he transferred it to her wrist.

She turned her wrist to admire the movement of the clusters of pearls. “This is very me,” she said, impressed. “I like it.”

“Really?” he was going to enjoy teasing her about how her tastes lined up with an eight-year-old boy. 

“Really,” she went up on her toes to kiss the corner of his mouth. “Love it—” she said, grabbing her purse.

She was almost out the door when she looked back at him, hair falling forward, “Love you,” she said, blowing her hair out of her face and skipping off to her lunch date before he could work out if he heard her correctly.

 

His day was relatively uneventful. His assistant handed in her resignation. It wasn’t a tremendous surprise. Oliver knew that Julia had applied for a position in tax compliance, and it was a management level promotion. Her resignation was a formality. She asked for three weeks’ notice with a week of vacation time, and he approved the request and congratulated her on her promotion. She already had a short-list of recommendations with resumes for him to review for the vacancy.

“Bruce Wayne has been calling you. Daily,” she said. “I get the impression that people don’t normally blow him off, and he doesn’t like it,” she said.

She had already emailed him about that, so he just nodded. “Right. Tell Tess’s assistant that if she values her job, she will transfer Tess to me if she calls,” he said.

After Julia left him alone, he placed the call to Bruce. 

He expected to be booted to hold on principle, but the man himself answered his own phone. “Huh,” Oliver said. “I figured you had a minion who held your cell phone and did bimbo patrol,” he said.

There was dead air for a good twenty seconds before Bruce said, “Stay out of my city. I’m not recruitable.”

“A little random, but okay,” Oliver said. “I’m pretty busy—as you may infer from the delay getting back to you.”

“Fine,” Bruce said. “It was interesting reading. Thanks for sharing.”

“Sure. Hook me up with the people who do your merchandising and we’ll call it even,” Oliver replied. 

Not recruitable? What a jerk. Bruce and Clark should start their own Loners in Black club. 

Lois popped in at the end of the day to ask him if he was available for dinner. “Sorry, I’m going to have to rain check you. I’ve got plans.”

“Chloe won’t mind.”

He pointed at himself, “I’ll mind.”

She paced in front of his desk. 

“Whatever you’re doing? It’s not going to work,” he warned. “Just spit it out.”

“I’ve been offered a foreign correspondents desk,” she said.

He looked away from his computer screen for a moment, and then went back to it.

“Things with Clark are at a really unsettled place, and I don’t know what to do,” she said. 

“Did you talk to Chloe?” he asked.

“She told me to talk to Clark,” Lois blew that off. “Really? Like it’s that simple?”

“It kind of is,” Oliver told her, checking his email one more time before logging off. “That was your five minutes. He undocked his laptop and sleeved it before stowing it in his briefcase. Using his desk phone, he speed dialed Julia. 

“I’m leaving for the day. Text or call me if anything earth shattering comes up, and I’ll be in early tomorrow, but I want my afternoon kept clear,” he said.

“Right. See you tomorrow, Oliver,” Julia answered. 

After he hung up, he shook his head. He just got her trained to call him Oliver, and now she was leaving. 

“Is my crisis boring you?” Lois demanded.

Oliver thought about it, and gave her an aggrieved look. “Yeah? A little bit. Talk to Clark. What possible help could I be? What am I going to say that is going to make a difference?” he asked as he put his suit coat on. 

“What would you do?” she challenged. “What if you were going to lose a really big deal if you didn’t move back to Star City? What would you do?”

“If I couldn’t convince Chloe to go with me, or use one of those crazy machines that fly between Metropolis and Star City?” He could tell that his sarcasm was missing the mark, so he shrugged. “I’d lose a really big deal,” he said. “And I probably wouldn’t think twice about it.”

Lois processed that, and she smiled. “Well, that’s something. I’m glad for you, Ollie. I guess you have some big date night planned?”

He just laughed at her. “Oh, please. Like I’m telling you where to ambush us. What am I, an amateur?”

 

After four days of working in the midst of wiring strung like silly string, Chloe Sullivan looked down on the reassembled Watchtower. With Oliver’s money, Bart running supplies, Victor’s help, and the redundancies that had been built into the system over the course of several months, Watchtower was back on line. 

How much time she had put into the place since the day that Emil came to tell her that Oliver wasn’t answering her calls? How much of herself had she picked apart and reassembled? It felt like she had reached the terminal version of Watchtower. It was still hers, but even as she stood looking out at all of it, her hands braced on the railing, she didn’t want it anymore.

She stayed here, putting Watchtower back together while Ollie was in the hospital, and she was never getting those hours back. There was a cost to that time that wasn’t accounted for yet.

Oliver was on his way up on the elevator. 

They were down to waiting for the shooting to start. With the team deploying around the globe, she had gone to the mattresses, and Oliver was with her. 

As if he felt her eyes on him, he looked up suddenly, smiling. “Hey, Gorgeous.”

She smiled back. “I can’t believe that you put in a full day at the office,” she said. He had been in-bound while Clark was getting the Book of Rao from his mother. The rest of the team deployed through the day, shadowing the movements of the Kandorians.

He met her at the bottom of the spiral staircase. “I had a few things that I had to take care of,” he said. “What about you?” he gestured around. “Look at this place.”

“I had a lot of help,” she pointed out, resting her arms on his shoulders. 

His hand cupped her jaw. “Look at you,” he said.

She hadn’t had a lot of hair and make-up time lately. Her hair was full of soft curls. Her bangs were too long and heavy and the ends kept swinging forward to brush her lips, strands sticking to her lipstick. She was wearing something intriguingly satin and lace trimmed under his sweater and a pair of fluffy bunny slippers. 

He tilted his head, running his hands over her waist and hips, frowning a little at how the sweater fit. 

“I was sleeping in it when you were gone. I might have accidentally shrunk it a little,” she confessed. 

He kissed the corner of her mouth. “I’ve got to go suit up,” he said before their lips met in a long, slow kiss that had him questioning how uncomfortable the spiral staircase would be if they just went at it there. It was one of the few surfaces in Watchtower that hadn’t been repurposed in the heat of the moment. 

He still felt a little on edge. Emil prescribed a tranquilizer for him to help him deal with the withdrawal symptoms that could not be entirely suppressed, emphasizing how important it was that Oliver follow the protocol he laid out. He hadn’t been on patrol since he had been released from the hospital, and he was planning to go out tonight, even if it was a short patrol. 

Recognizing that he needed to burn off some pent up energy, he gave her another kiss and headed up to get dressed. 

He changed out of his suit and tie. Emil had overzealously cut him out of his pants. He had another pair, slightly less broken in, but comfortable enough. Leaving Chloe’s room, he went to his weapon’s locker to arm himself. 

Chloe was opening bags and plating their dinner when he came down. 

“What are you packing?” he asked.

“Glock,” she nodded over to her desk. “Jericho in the nightstand.”

The nightstand was between the door and the bed upstairs. He nodded. “You usually sleep on the door side of the bed?”

She nodded absently, licking sauce off her finger. 

The lights were low. Looking around he saw that she had put a candle out on the coffee table and there were a pair of glasses, and an unopened bottle of wine.

Hands on his hips, he turned back to her. “Ms. Sullivan? Are you setting the scene for seduction?” he teased.

“Oh, yeah. You go run around in your costume,” she nodded, pointing at herself. “This girl is getting some.”

“I’m not going to be gone long,” he told her.

“Uh-huh,” she didn’t look convinced.

“I’m not,” he insisted. “It’s our thing. We stand around soaking in the geektastic drama. I make fun of us—mostly Clark. He looks stoic. It’s our ritual,” Oliver said.

She came out from around the corner, still in his sweater, but she had added lounge pants. He made a face at that. 

“Hurry back,” she said, blowing him a kiss.

 

Oliver found Clark on a rooftop overlooking the phone booth that was one of the Blur’s favorite rendez-vous points with Lois Lane. 

“You are late,” Clark said when Oliver landed after making a dramatic jump from one rooftop to the one Clark occupied. “I almost called it a night.”

“That would have jinxed it for sure,” Oliver observed.

Clark shrugged. “I could hook you up with a cape.”

Oliver paused, cocking his head. “Was that a joke?” he asked. 

Clark smiled a little. “I have a sense of humor,” he protested.

“Sure you do,” Oliver humored him. “It was a 2 on a 5-point scale of funny. Problem with you? It comes too easy. You have to practice.”

Clark’s smile warmed with affection. Where were they a year ago? With all of his money and bouts of over-indulgence, Oliver had always seemed older to him. More worldly if not always wiser. Clark had watched him teeter on the same precipice Lex had gone over. Both men had what they felt were good reasons, and good intentions, to justify bad acts. The difference was that Oliver seized the opportunity to come back. He had help, but ultimately he saved himself with the choices he made.

Misinterpreting the look, Oliver nodded. “We are ready, Clark.”

Clark had seen his destiny. Dr. Fate had told him what he would become. A very large part of him wanted that. He wanted it like it was the prize at the bottom of a wholesome, but not particularly appealing box of cereal. 

If he used the Book of Rao and left Earth to lead his people to a better future, he would be leaving Oliver with the team that Oliver and Chloe had built. There was no question in his mind that they would hold it together.

His smile slipped a little at what he would be missing. Lois, of course. That was an ocean of loss now that he understood that what she needed to make her life complete. Oliver and Chloe, too. That was a different kind of pain. Of all the people he knew, no one had sacrificed so much of themselves and their dreams than Chloe, and he had a feeling that it was all about to change. 

Responding to a soft click in his ear, Oliver tapped his Bluetooth. “Go Tower,” he said.

“If you boys are done having your moment, I’ve got a robbery in progress on Camden Road,” Chloe said. “Oh, and you’ll like this: the women’s shelter is calling for some ‘harshing’ on a guy loitering out front.”

“Shout-out to Big Bird,” Oliver said. “That one is mine,” he told Clark. 

Clark knew what he was going to say next. When Oliver invited him to join the team he was putting together years ago, he had a problem to resolve in the escapees from the Phantom Zone, but he wasn't ready to leave the farm. “Let’s go be heros,” he said.

Gears whined on a crossbow that Oliver was pointing at distant rooftop. He fired his anchor bolts and looked over at him, cracking up. "Aw! Are we having a moment? Rain check on hugging it out?"

 

After he changed out of his uniform into a t-shirt and sweats, Oliver paused at the main console, looking for the remote to engage the iris, and coded in at the keyboard to set a lock down for the elevator with a text alert to the team that they were locking up for the night. He checked the log, noting that both Jonn and Clark were on alert until morning. 

“Shut it down, and come eat,” Chloe called out. “I think I broke the cork.”

He checked. The corkscrew was in at an angle, but he pulled it out without losing any of it. He poured the wine into the tumblers she brought from the kitchen. 

“I just got a bunch of different things that we both like,” he said.

“It’s perfect. Relax,” she said. “You are kind of wound up tonight.”

He tried to shrug it off. The feeling of impending doom. He was going to screw this up, so bad. He was going to say something stupid, and she was going to figure out that he was the guy that got the girl and then screwed it up.

His throat felt like it was full of sand again. 

He got up while she was eating her dinner. She needed to eat. He needed to stop freaking out because she was going to stop eating and she missed too many meals as it was. He went to the kitchen, opening the refrigerator to stare vacantly at the contents. Then he checked the freezer. 

No ice cream. “No ice cream,” he announced.

She was watching him with a puzzled frown. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

He came back and sat on the coffee table, pushing his dinner away. She started to put hers down, and he shook his head. “Eat, please, before I start cutting your food into tiny pieces and hand feeding you.” 

“Okay,” she sounded it out. “Is there anything about your trip to crazy town that I need to be worried about?” she asked, wondering if she should call Emil.

“This is the moment when I usually do something stupid,” he said, diving in. 

“Oh,” she said. “Okay.”

He sucked in a breath, “No, you say that, but it really isn’t okay.”

“Newsflash, Romeo: I stole three million dollars from your company,” she said. “And somehow we managed to get over it.”

“Except not really,” he argued. “You knew better than to trust me to back you on that.”

Chloe did a double take. “What?”

“Think, Chloe. Why wouldn’t you have asked me for the money?”

She frowned. “Yeah, I guess. I was pretty mad about how quick everyone was to dismiss our impending doom. I was mad at both of you,” she shot him a look. “And you—“ she stopped, lips compressed.

“I told Clark that you were probably responsible for Lois being taken from the hospital,” he said.

“At least that almost made sense,” she muttered. “She’s my family.”

“I thought you put Lois in danger on purpose with Roulette,” he went on.

It wasn’t the craziest thing that he had ever thought. He thought that she killed Sebastian Kane. He thought that she had betrayed them to hide Davis.

“What did I say to you when I confronted you about stealing from me?” he asked. 

“No,” she said. “Pull on any thread but that one. The important thing is that we didn’t let it get in the way, and the day for you to drag that out of the closet was done a couple of months ago.”

He looked so unhappy, that she felt a stab of fear. 

"I can't let it go." he rubbed the palms of his hands on his knees. His heart was pounding. "I . . . I've let you down in the past, and I need you to know that _I_ know it."

“I know how you feel about me,” she said. “I’ve known for a while. I thought if I ignored it for long enough, you would eventually decide to cut your losses.”

It made sense. “What was it? When did you know?”

“It was a lot of things. Little things. When my Dad came and you said something like ‘I'll be whatever you need me to be’,” she shrugged. “That’s pretty much what you’ve done all along.”

“I love you,” she said. “Even if it makes you want to go get ice cream and plot your escape.”

His eyes stung, so he did the sensible thing and closed them. He started to say that he wouldn’t do that, but he wasn’t so sure that was true, and it was pretty humbling to find out that you suddenly understood the guy that pulled shit like that.

“I didn’t think you’d take it so hard. I really thought you’d be smug and insist that I jump out of a cake and announce it to the world.”

He opened one eye to peer at her. “My birthday is just a few months away,” he reminded her. 

“Sweater? Knitted by nuns? Remember that?”

He sighed. 

“Are you going to eat your dinner?” she asked.

He gave a spare shake of his head. “I’m feeling a little queasy, to be honest,” he said. 

“You don’t mind if I finish the Fiorentini with squash?”

“Have it,” he said.

She moved around him to transfer it from his plate to hers. “Would it make you happier if I didn’t object to buying me a car?”

His eyes opened at that. Was nothing sacred? 

She shrugged. “You never clear your browsing history, and there is no way that you are looking up the consumer reports on the safest cars on the road for yourself. Just don’t go crazy with it. The Land Rover is starting to grow on me.”

The ache in his chest eased. “I’ve known since your birthday, and I’m not going anywhere unless you are coming with me.”

He moved back over to the couch and watched her demolish the rest of the Fionentini. She started to offer him the last bite and then pulled the fork back. “Don’t say it back just because I said it. I have issues too, and I don’t want to remember it as the moment when I thought, ‘oh yeah, that’s convincing’.”

“Done,” he managed to say. He let her feed him the last bite, and then he dragged her upstairs.

 

 

The fact of the matter is that the first few times either of them said it, it sounded a little less than convincing. There were extenuating circumstances. They both placed more value in action. When Chloe and Jimmy were together, she wondered what it meant to him when he said that he loved her. With Oliver, she knew he loved her before he ever said it, and he insisted that it was the same for him.

While Zod was confronting the world’s hero, Chloe’s hero was crawling through an air duct, hooking up the satellite that she would later find out bore her name. It was six months before she saw him again. The start of an odyssey in which she would erase her identity to protect his and he would tell the world his secret so it couldn’t be used to keep them apart.

In the first days after the hostage exchange, he was confronted by the totality of her disappearance. She had been erased from existence. Her note to him was the last thing he wanted to believe she would have written. 

It was one hell of a time to discover that his worst fears were not going to be realized. He knew exactly what she had done and he had a few of the reasons why. When she didn’t come back after he told the world that he was Green Arrow, he had told himself that it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t allow secrets to rule his life. 

He ran his company. He supported his friends. He learned to get along with Tess, and then he learned to be her friend. He wasn’t a patient man. She said that she loved him, and he believed her.

He found her in a nightmare built out of reasons to believe that she had betrayed him.

“Do you trust me?” she asked.

“With my life.”

A few minutes later he followed her off of a roof. 

His trust wasn’t blind. He thought that she took terrible and terrifying risks. He worried that she had a huge blind spot when it came to how important she was to him. He knew that she was still trying to figure out her place in the world. He thought that she didn't understand that his place in the world was by her side while she figured it out. 

When the yearbooks and the pensive look appeared, he started looking for a business card that he hadn’t been able to bring himself to throw away. 

Finding her was a happy accident. There wasn’t anything accidental about what he did to keep her.


	10. Ten (Final)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Ten Banner: http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/bkwurm1/12629216/21719/21719_900.jpg

Oliver’s jeans were on the floor, one leg straight, and the other bent at the knee. If he wasn’t sleeping peacefully in their bed, it might have looked like he melted out of them Chloe decided as she returned to bed with a cup of coffee and her own prize, clutched in her hand. 

She woke up wanting a do-over on waking up hung over wearing a wedding ring, married to Clark. Trying not to wake Oliver, she carefully set her coffee cup down, and slid her ring back into place on her finger. She meant to reorganize the pillows on her side of the bed, but looking at the ring gave her a strange feeling. Yesterday it looked like the worst kind of accident—the kind you just knew that you were going to pay for in some horrible way. 

Biting her lip, she held her hand up to the light, the dull glint of metal against her skin made her feel something different. The patience and love in eyes when she pieced together their wedding certificate, and the way he let her work it out in her head and heart while he waited. Rescuing her from the lump in her throat that she couldn’t speak past to say that he hoped that she wasn’t leaving without him—leaving so much _so_ perfectly unsaid. 

Her eyes filled with tears again. 

His hand grazed her bare leg. He was waking up, moving to her side of the bed. His arm wrapped around her waist to pull her down to him while he curled around her. When he saw the tears, he gave her a little smile. 

“Tell me what you are thinking about?” he invited as he slipped his hand under the t-shirt she was wearing.

She loved words, and she was speechless still. 

He threaded his free hand through the fingers of her ring hand. Her very, very married hand, and she tugged their joined hands in, against her heart, absorbing the feel of him surrounding her, his chest to her back. She was on his arm in a way that had to be uncomfortable, and as the thought formed, he made a few adjustments, nuzzling the nape of her neck while he used his foot to push one of her ice cold feet against his leg to warm.

“I was going to get up early to make breakfast for you,” he said as his fingers gently traced the waistband of her panties. 

He sounded a little wistful.

There were things she needed to say to him. She opened her eyes, not even realizing that she had closed them, blinking through the tears as she tried to regulate her breathing. What came out, surprised even her for brevity and clarity. 

“I didn’t see this,” she said.

She saw too much when she used Fate’s helmet. She saw Clark flying into his destiny. She saw Lois, at his side. She even saw Jimmy, without the darkness that she brought out of him. She saw things that she would never tell them about: Carter Hall’s death and Lex Luthor resurrected. AC drifting further and further away from them on his own righteous quest. She saw Bart die _twice_. She didn’t see everything, and sometimes what she saw was something buried so deep that she didn’t recognize it until it was already happening. She didn’t see DeSaad, but one of the few times she saw herself, she killed him. It wasn’t until she was holding a knife against his chest that she understood that it was within her to kill him, and that she had to resist. 

The only thing she saw about Oliver was how to save him, and saving him—saving all of them—meant that she had to become the Ghost in the Machine. Be a stealth watchtower for them until the tipping point arrived when she would be required to be more than any threat ever demanded of her. 

She saw Lois and Clark together, and she knew that Lois would be an old woman before someone that made her remember Carter Hall would become the center of Lois’ granddaughter’s world. She _still_ didn’t see Oliver with her. 

“I never thought that I’d get to have this,” she said.

His arms tightened around her. “You do,” Oliver murmured, his voice rough and tight. “This is just the beginning.”

His arms loosened when he realized that she was trying to turn to face him. Her eyelashes were clumpy with tears and mascara she hadn’t washed off completely last night and her breath smelled like coffee. She showed him her hand adorned with a very plain and horribly unworthy ring from a vending machine. 

He freed his hand to wipe away her tears.

“I don’t want to tell anyone before we leave,” she said, her fingers coming to rest on either side of his face. 

His eyes were steady on hers. “You want to tell them that we are leaving today?”

Her fingertips were cool and soft, light as a whisper on his lips. She nodded. “Leave tomorrow?”

“Okay,” he agreed.

“We’re together,” she said, searching his face for any hint of regret about the way they were together. 

“Married.”

“Let’s start with together, and work up to it,” she suggested.

He laughed softly. “Consummated the hell out of it, didn’t we?” he teased.

Chloe laughed too. “We might have to do that a few more times.”

His nose wrinkled. “I need to refuel.”

“Okay,” she said, stretching a little to reach his mouth with a light, milky coffee and burnt sugar flavored kiss. 

He cupped the back of her head, holding her a moment longer. “Are you okay? I’m committed to being awesome at being your husband—“

Her soft laughter was muffled by his lips. He liked kissing her when she was laughing at him. 

“Who are you competing with?” she asked. 

 

She thought she was being subtle, but Oliver caught her hand, sliding his fingers between hers. He gave her a sideways look. “Don’t get too attached,” he warned.

They were in the kitchen, making breakfast. Sort of. Oliver was working the phone. He might have lost his company to Lionel Luthor, but he wasn’t taking it lying down, and QI was hardly the extent of his fortune. Tess had called him twice this morning, once on League business, and once on their business partnership. 

“What do you mean?” she asked.

They were making egg white omelets, and knife work was Oliver’s area. He had his counter space organized like Cordon Bleu mise en place with little glass bowls of precisely chopped vegetables. Chloe separate eggs by carefully cracking the egg to make two cups of the shell and passing the contents from one-half of the shell to the other over a bowl until nothing was left in the shell but the yolk. 

“I get a do-over on the rings,” he insisted. “I don’t want to hear about how this is ‘the’ ring. The one true ring.”

She hid a smile by ducking her head. “Even if it makes me feel very, very married?”

“I don’t think you need to worry about that. I’m sure I can make sure that you feel very, very married all the time,” he retorted, opening a drawer to pull out a stainless steel egg separator. 

“It fits perfectly,” she pointed out, frowning at his fancy egg separator. “If you use that, you aren’t going to accidentally get some of the good stuff,” she pointed out while he cracked an egg and demonstrated how his method was faster and less messy.

He threw out the consolation prize. “I think there is some bacon.”

She abandoned egg separating to go check the refrigerator, emerging with a butcher paper wrapped package of lean applewood bacon. The griddle on the stove was already hot so she unwrapped the bacon and carefully separated two strips for each of them and laid them on the griddle. She started to wrap the bacon back up, and pulled an extra strip off to place on the griddle. 

The smell of bacon cooking was making her hungry. Oliver whisked the eggs with a little club soda. It was the way Chloe and her Dad made omelets when she lived at home, and it made her think about her Dad. 

“Ollie?”

His phone started ringing again. He gave her an apologetic look and passed the bowl of eggs to her. “Don’t put it on until—“

“I know, the bacon is turned,” she said. A big 9-inch stainless steel omelet pan was already on the stove.

He wiped his hands off on a towel, scooping up the phone. “Tess? Has the world ended this morning, because I’m kind of unemployed here,” he said.

There was a brief pause. Oliver leaned against the counter. Chloe was checking out his ingredients. He had diced tomato, green and yellow peppers, spinach, onion, and fresh garlic. When he saw her reaching for the peppers, he moved, slipping around her and wrapping his arm around her so she was facing away from his prep area.

Tess was rattling on about how he needed to push his lawyers to file something so they could slow Lionel down. 

“Tess,” he interrupted her. “We’re making breakfast, but yeah, I’m on the same page. In fact, you think you could get the gang together sometime later today? Chloe and I are going to Star City, and we’d like to see everyone before we leave,” he temporized. Chloe’s stomach growled enough that he could feel it under his hand, and he rubbed her stomach while Tess fired off a text to the League, and mercifully promised to leave him alone for a while.

Chloe’s phone rang as soon as he hung up and he took the eggs back. “Go,” he said. “I’ve got this.”

He flipped the bacon and poured the egg white into the skillet, rotating the skillet slowly to coat the pan evenly before putting it back on the stove. When the omelet got that creamy texture in the middle, layered the spinach first and then the diced ingredients, working a spatula to loosen the edge and then, “Chloe!”

She came back, still on the phone, but passing it over to him to do her little wrist magic thing to flip the omelet. 

“Awesome,” he mouthed, and then realized that breakfast was almost ready. He pointed at the phone. 

“My boss,” she mouthed back.

He handed her the phone.

“Sorry about that, Dan,” she resumed. “I think we’ll—I’ll be in Star City tomorrow, so can I get back to you about that?”

There were some more pleasantries and then she was off the phone too and pulling down plates from the cabinet. She snatched the extra strip of bacon, while Oliver plated, but she offered him a bite. 

“We should have just done one plate, and then you could sit on my lap while we feed each other,” he observed. 

“Too hungry,” she told him. “I’m going to inhale this. Some of it may end up on my boobs.”

“Like that’s new,” he retorted, having seen her boobs adorned with popcorn, chips, cookie crumbs, and sugared cinnamon from churros—which was the only time he insisted that she had to take off her shirt and bra before eating.

Chloe tasted the omelet and tucked in, sitting on her foot, and bouncing a little. “We are so good at omelets. We should make these for my Dad.”

“Yeah?” Oliver had an idea where she was going with this. “My calendar is . . . actually,” he paused to chew and swallow. “I could get used to this,” he admitted. 

She smirked at that. 

“What?”

“Oliver, you’ve never wrestled with your calendar. I have. And Julia, and your current set of former assistants, wrestled with your calendar.”

He did a little back and forth thing with his head. “I miss Julia,” he said. It reminded him of Mia. “Hey—Mia? She’s enrolled this semester, but if we’re going to West Coast are home base, how do you feel about me asking her if she wants to relocate?”

“I’m for it,” Chloe said.

Oliver shook his head, laughing at her. “Are you saving your bacon for dessert?”

“Shut up,” she murmured around a mouthful of eggs. 

Chloe had new habits acquired in her time away. Healthier eating, and regular, rigorous exercise. Her time with the Suicide Squad got her in fighting form, and she was determined not to lose that. It was nice that they had that in common now. Oliver got restless if he didn’t have time to work out. 

“Are we on the same page about our relationship status?” he asked. He pointed at her with a strip of bacon. “You want to tell the world tomorrow? We’ll do that, no problem—but,” he shrugged. “If you don’t want to spring it on everyone, I have to say that I’m thinking that would be better. I don’t want you on Lionel Luthor’s radar.”

She smiled. “Do I get to be your secret weapon?”

His secret weapon had serious bedhead and was dressed in a t-shirt and panties and a pair of pink pig slipper socks. 

He nodded. “I like the sound of that.”

“Beats the hell out of potential kidnapping victim,” she guessed.

He grimaced. “In our last confrontation _this_ Lionel was happy to tell me that one thing he and _our_ version of Lionel had in common was that he murdered the _other_ Oliver’s parents.” The mirror box was responsible for some of the most convoluted sentences Oliver had ever uttered. “So, yeah. I don’t want to give him a target.”

They spent the rest of the morning working out the logistics of their move to Star City. Oliver’s place in the city was a 2,800 square foot residential suite in an oceanfront luxury hotel and resort convenient to the business district in Star City. They would keep the news of their marriage on a need-to-know basis after they talked to Gabe. Chloe wanted to keep it secret until after Lois’ wedding since Oliver was so much in the news lately since the VRA repeal.

It went without saying that it would give both of them time to live into their new status. Chloe had to give up her wedding band before they left to meet the team, and traded it for her pearl bracelet. She left the ring on the table on her side of the bed, catching Oliver’s eye. “That better not disappear on me,” she warned him.

He shook his head. “Chloe . . . it’s fake,” he said as if he was breaking the news to her.

“No. Its genuine gold plated and hypo-allergenic,” she countered. “Simple and classic.”

“Ah,” he nodded, following her out of the bedroom. “Of course. The obvious choice for the simple and classic bride dripping in costume jewelry.”

“I was kind of extra sparkly,” she allowed. “Perfect for you. I had no idea that you’d look so hot in rhinestones and satin.”

“There it is,” he muttered. “I’m never going to live that down.”

Chloe was caught eyeing his ass when he turned to her with her coat. “Perv,” he muttered, kissing the top of her head anyway.

She giggled. “You looked amazing!” she said, grabbing him by his belt loops to pull him back for a kiss.

“Your cousin is . . .”

“No words, really for Lois’s costuming genius,” Chloe agreed, shamelessly groping his ass.

Oliver’s eyebrows rose. He rested his forehead against hers. “Go on. Get it all out now, because your poker face sucks, and everyone is going to figure out that we’ve got a huge secret.”

“Uh-uh,” she breathed, giving him a sunny smile. “I’m starting the next chapter of my life, in a new city, with the love of my life,” she said as the elevator doors opened. 

He smiled back. “C’mon. Say it,” he teased. Except suddenly, he wasn’t teasing. “I know, but sometimes I need to hear it.”

Oh . . . that. Chloe’s lips quivered. She had it memorized. He demanded that she read it to him. “Oh, Ollie . . .” her voice cracked on his name. “I’ve never loved anyone the way that I love you.”

The pad of his thumb wiped away a tear that slipped from her suddenly wet eyes. “You are my brightest star.”

His thumb smeared the teardrop on her trembling lips. 

“You are my knight in shining leather,” she whispered.

This wasn’t the first time she had quoted her infamous email on demand. The first night she was back, Oliver whipped out her email and made her read it to him. Twice. The second time, he recorded it on his phone. 

“I love you,” he said, ducking his head into the space between her jaw and the collar of her coat. “Even if you are kind of a clingy and dramatic.”

“My hero,” she finished in a voice full of laughter and tears. “I love you, too. Even if you do look better than I do in a rhinestone encrusted bra. You have no idea.”

Their embrace became crushing. “ _You_ have no idea,” he echoed. 

They both thought they were right. Chloe, because she knew that if Fate’s helmet hadn’t provided her with the clue that she needed, she would have buried that knife in DeSaad’s chest and called it justice if it kept Oliver safe. Oliver, because he knew that she was the lever that would move him to murder. Keeping what she was to him a secret wasn’t going to be hard if it kept her safe from Lionel and from the darkness that threatened them. 

 

A few hours later, they were at Watchtower with the Metropolis based super-friends. Oliver found himself sitting on the eggplant purple upholstered couch between Emil and Tess watching Chloe across the room. She was chatting with Lois and Clark about her new job. Jonn was expected to drop in later. It was a school night for Courtney who was enjoying a semester abroad at Oliver’s expense anyway. 

Lois’s initial reaction when Chloe announced that she was moving to Star City to take a position, as a reporter, with The Star City Register had been to turn to Tess and ask if she was going to let this happen. 

Tess tilted her head to one side and told Chloe that there was a position open at The Daily Planet. Since Lois was one of the applicants for that position, Lois got a funny look on her face, but tamped it down quickly. 

Chloe just shrugged. “I’ve already accepted, and I’m packed and ready to go.” She tilted her head toward Oliver. “And I’ve got a place to stay.”

This was Oliver’s cue to jump in and explain that he was going with her.

Lois just rolled her eyes. “Duh. Like that was not a foregone conclusion. I can’t believe that you are only just now getting around to telling anyone!”

Chloe beamed, and promptly shoved Clark in the oncoming path of Lois. “I told Clark,” she chirped while Oliver smiled down at her. She was so cute when she was managing other people without them knowing it.

Tess and Emil appeared to be enjoying the floorshow as Clark reminded Lois that Star City wasn’t really that far away. He turned to Chloe, urging her to tell Lois that she was available for wedding planning and other bride’s maid duties as assigned.

By tacit agreement, Emil, Oliver, and Tess retreated to the couch.

Chloe was too smart to let him get away with that. “Plan your own wedding, Clark,” she scolded. “Sheesh! Lo? Are you letting him get away with that?”

“Can it, Smallville,” Lois said. “If you think that all you have to do is pick out a suit and show up, you can think again.”

Aw! The three of them were so cute when they were bickering.

Lois was rolling up her disappointment and moving on. “So you and Ollie? Shacking up? I’d love to be in the newsroom when that little detail registers.”

Chloe just shook her head, smiling as if she was _sure_ that it wasn’t going to be a problem. 

Oliver thought Lois had called it correctly, but he wasn’t going to burst Chloe’s bubble. She would figure out how weird her life in Star City was going to be, and he wasn’t going to interfere with her professional life.

Oliver caught Emil looking over at him with an odd expression. Tess leaned back and Emil followed suit so they could engage in a wordless exchange out of his line of sight. 

Oliver let them have at it for a few minutes and then he picked up a beer bottle on the coffee table and leaned back to interrupt their non-verbal passing of the hot potato.

He rotated his head from Emil to Tess and back to Emil while Tess pretended an interest in her manicure. 

“You need to review the tape,” Emil said quietly.

This was kind of familiar, Oliver decided. “Do you know something that I don’t know?” he asked, holding his poker face.

Tess snorted, seeing through that. “Who else knows?” 

Emil suddenly smiled as Oliver pretended to think about it. 

“Chloe,” Emil guessed, chuckling. He toasted Oliver with his glass of wine. “Congratulations. I’m going to miss you.”

“I’ll be back and forth for a while, and we still have golf,” Oliver pointed out. “You’ll have to come to Star City every once in a while.”

Emil nodded. “I can do that.”

“I don’t get it,” Tess interjected. “Why is this a secret?”

“We’re easing into it,” Oliver said, “and your father is a homicidal megalomaniac bent on ruling the world through villainy.”

“Ah,” Tess nodded. “Probably wise,” she agreed as Chloe joined them. Emil surrendered his seat to move to Tess’s other side. 

Chloe gave Oliver an exasperated look. “Why was anyone surprised when you came out of the hero closet?” She gestured to Emil. “You were alone for five minutes.”

“It’s Emil,” Oliver countered. “He figured it out—“

Emil shrugged, feigning modesty. “It’s my thing. I’m observant.”

Tess played along. “It’s true. Dr. Emil Hamilton, sexy scientist guy. His super power is that he’s smart.”

“I like it. His costume is a serious expression, glasses, and a lab coat.”

Chloe popped open a carton of spicy chicken in noodles and found a pair of chopsticks from the delivery place down the street. “Nobody knows,” she cautioned. 

“I can help with that,” Tess volunteered. “But, just for the record, it was pretty obvious.”

The four of them looked across the room at Lois and Clark, standing close, with their heads together. “So cute,” Chloe aw’ed, turning to Tess. “Did you get a capture on the surveillance feed with Ollie in drag—“ she ignored Oliver’s betrayed glare, mouthing, _‘Send it to me’_ while Tess snickered.

 

Gabe Sullivan took the news that they were married with an eye roll. He was living in Minneapolis now. Oliver had stayed in touch with him through the months of Chloe’s absence. He felt that he owed it to Gabe to tell him why Chloe had taken off. Oliver revealed his secret identity and filled him in about Chloe’s role.

She had ten days to settle in before the start date for her new job, and since most of her belongings had been stored in the basement of The Talon, and lost when the Suicide Squad blew it up in their foiled assassination plot, Chloe had to assemble a work wardrobe. Tess proved surprisingly helpful. She didn’t have time to shop for herself. She put Chloe in touch with a firm that worked with executives. 

Chloe and Oliver didn’t hide, so before she walked through the wavy glass doors of the Star City Register for the first time, Chloe Sullivan had already been seen around town with Oliver, and her new boss, Dan MacMillan had been informed that they were dating. She was assigned to the City desk working with two reporters with over forty years combined covering local news for a newspaper that employed two stringers on the Oliver Queen/Green Arrow beat. Oliver had been going low profile on his social life since his epic bender after Doomsday, so there was a certain amount of curiosity directed her way from her new colleagues, but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t deflect.

They were both busy. Oliver was working with his lawyers to get his company back, attacking the actions of the receiver managing his assets while he was a fugitive. The legal team was making good progress on building a strong case for stock manipulation and collusion with Lionel Luthor. Tess and Chloe were doing the heavy lifting on an idea that Lois had that there was a reason that Lionel had to have all of his documents re-issued. The documentation that Tess had for her placement in the orphanage was their smoking gun. Lionel’s signature was not a perfect match and his fingerprints were reversed, providing them with positive proof that he was a fraud. 

Tess delivered the coup de grace, ejecting Lionel 2.0 from his position of power and cutting off his access to the combined assets of Luthor Corp and Queen Industries. 

Emil and Tess flew to Star City for the weekend, and after Clark wrapped up his patrol, he arrived with a windblown Lois. With Lionel somewhat contained, Oliver agreed that it was time to tell Lois and Clark their news. 

Oliver paused to see if everyone had a glass of champagne, and smiled to see that this gathering was looking a lot like the bachelor/bachelorette blow out. The women were dressed for a night on the town, and the mood was festive. Lois was admiring the early spring tan Chloe was acquiring, shown off by a sleeveless lace shift with a subtle color shift that fell a few inches short of her knees. She was working with Victor and Tess to create Watchtower analogs for deployment in cities with League members, and sharing bylines with her two more experienced colleagues at The Register. She had delivered a Skype bitch slap to Lionel earlier that afternoon, and as he picked up her champagne glass to bring to her, he felt a wave of pride and love that belonged to this moment. 

“We are celebrating a couple of things tonight,” he said. 

“Got my partner back,” Tess toasted him. 

“Which would not have been possible without a certain reporter’s instincts,” Oliver toasted Lois.

Clark wrapped his arm around Lois’s waist, kissing her cheek as she preened a little. “Chloe and Tess did the hard work,” she pointed out.

Clark smiled at Chloe. “It’s a week early, but happy birthday, Chloe,” he toasted her.

“Are we doing gifts now?” Emil wanted to know, blowing the birthday surprise wide open.

Chloe beamed at Clark, accepting a kiss on her cheek. “Cake first,” she said, then, “there will be cake?”

Lois hugged her. “What, am I new at this? Of course there is cake,” she scoffed. “Clark and I are practically pastry critics at this point.”

Emil held his arms open for a hug after Lois was done and even Tess exchanged an awkward hug, juggling her champagne glass and the phone she had been using to take pictures. 

“Do I get a kiss?” she asked when she came back to Oliver.

“I’m actually planning to be here for your birthday, so—“

She curled her arm over his shoulder and leaned into him for a kiss, smiling up at him when it ended. 

“Don’t move,” Lois was getting a picture of them. “This is going to make an awesome picture,” she said, showing them after she got it. “This is your signature couple pose.”

Oliver and Chloe exchanged smiles. His eyebrows rose and she nodded, laughing softly. “It’s time,” she agreed.

“Yeah?” he tilted his head. “Do you want to start, or . . .”

She took it. “Sure . . . long story—though we were all there,” she laughed, shaking her head, while Oliver squeezed her hip supportively. “Piecing together the events of the evening of February 26th—the night of the infamous Lois and Clark bachelor party blow-out—Oliver and I—“

Lois’s lips were compressed in an obvious effort to squeeze the maximum amount of enjoyment out of Chloe’s predicament. 

Catching Lois’s eye, Oliver realized that she knew. Or at least strongly suspected.

Chloe took a deep breath. “We got married,” she said.

_“What?”_

Clark’s fake surprise was so earnestly fake that Emil groaned. “You are so bad at this!”

Lois rolled her eyes. “Finally! I can’t believe that you didn’t tell me. Me! I’ve been rooting for you all along, cuz.”

Chloe pouted. “How long have you known?”

“When I found my purse,” she said. “I had pictures. Some of which, are not something you’d want me to share.”

Clark dropped the pretense. “We figured that you had your reasons, and trusted you to tell us when the time was right,” he said.

Chloe had her arm around Oliver’s waist, so she and Clark exchanged smiles that managed to encompass a decade of keeping secrets for and from each other.

“Right, then,” Oliver said briskly. “Well, we’re still operating on a need-to-know basis,” he said. “Lionel is still out there, and we don’t want to turn your wedding into a circus, so . . . clearly, you can help us keep it quiet.”

After dinner they came back to Oliver and Chloe’s for cake, coffee, and birthday presents. There were many conveniences that came with living in a hotel—maid service, valet parking, twenty-four hour concierge service, and readily available hotel suites for their overnight guests. 

Oliver waited until everyone left to give Chloe his present. They had picked out wedding bands, but he wanted Chloe to have an engagement ring, too. Her engagement ring was a five-carat pear cut, prong-set diamond designed to float over the top of her platinum band with bead set diamonds.

It hadn’t been obvious to him when they were in their non-relationship phase, but Chloe loved shopping. Since she had a new and well-coordinated wardrobe for work, she was indulging in other areas. She came out of the bathroom wearing a filmy white night gown held up with two satin strips, tied in bows, and the timing was perfect.

“I was saving this for your birthday,” he said showing her the velvet ring box.

Before he could open it, she put her hand over the box, shaking her head. “I think I know what this is, and I don’t want to see it until we are ready to wear our rings every day, Oliver. I don’t want to have a ring that I won’t ever want to take off until I don’t have to take it off anymore,” she said, anxiously searching his face for understanding.

He got it. “Okay.”

Her nose wrinkled. “I might crack if you don’t hide it,” she admitted, making him laugh. 

“Are you going to cover your eyes?” he asked. 

She looked up at him through her eyelashes, shrugging. “You could always blindfold me,” she suggested, eyes widening. “I think you promised to make sure that I felt very married as often as possible.”

“Blindfold? _What_?”

She went over to the dresser, looking for a blindfold, and Oliver wasn’t opposed to the idea, until she was putting the scarf in his hand. He knew that this was meant to be fun—the mischievous gleam in her eyes gave that away, but the hair on the back of his neck was prickling in an uncomfortable way. 

She made a face. “I’m going for sexy, but to date, blindfolds have been largely associated with my various kidnappings, so if I start to freak out, it isn’t personal. I trust you, absolutely.”

“Chloe—“ he shook his head.

Even after he had found her breadcrumbs and figured out what she had done, and Flagg confirmed in his way, that she had pulled it off, Oliver knew how bad it must have been. He had been blindfolded and beaten and tortured. He knew what they had done to her before she faked her death. It gave him nightmares still. 

He set the ring and the scarf down on the dresser. 

The specter of his darkest fears wasn’t something he wanted in her head. Or in their bed. Looking at her, he marveled at how much she changed everything for him. He had lived in this condo off and on for four years. It was an unfinished shell, professionally decorated, expensively, comfortably uncluttered and impersonal. 

Responding to the intent look in his eyes, she moved into his arms. “No blindfold?”

“No blindfold,” he agreed, tugging one of the ties to test the resiliency of bow holding the shoulder strap up. “Close your eyes,” he said, improvising. 

When she did, he looked down at her upturned face. Her eyelashes fanned against the soft skin under her eyes. Her lips parted. His fingertip traced the outer curve of her ear, tucking her hair behind her ear as he went, smiling a little to see a tiny frown appear and then smooth out as he kissed it away. 

Her hands tightened on his shoulders as his thumb stroked her throat, moving over to her jaw to tilt her head just a little as he lips brushed hers. Her eyelashes fluttered and he broke off the kiss. “Keep your eyes closed,” he admonished softly. 

His fingers traced the straps of her gown. 

Being unable to see him changed the way she touched him in subtle ways. She had to feel her way. It made removing his shirt challenging. She was careful at first, but after he pulled the bows loose on her nightgown, she got impatient and just fisted the freed edges of the front placate, pulling it through her hands and twisting when she reached the next button. 

He moved backward to the bed, bringing her with him. “Keep your eyes closed,” he warned as he pulled her down on top of him.

She pouted, struggling with his belt. “This isn’t fair. You aren’t dressed for this,” she complained.

He helped, rolling her to her back to give him room to get out of his pants and sweep her filmy gown down her legs. 

He crawled back over her, sliding one hand under her bottom to hold her while he kissed the flat of her stomach. “Keep your eyes closed, Chloe,” he whispered again as her handed guided his between her legs. 

He didn’t give her a chance to wonder about where he was, or what he was thinking, When her knee nudged his hip while her hands pushed and pulled his shoulders, he went with her. 

She rested her forehead on his chest as she welcomed him inside her with a moan that had him gripping her hips. It had always been good between them, but he wondered if he hadn’t built it up in his head when he thought that she might not be coming back. Then she came back, and it kept getting better. He opened his eyes to catch her peeking at him through her eyelashes, her face flushed and tense with pleasure and need. 

“Cheater,” he called her out on it. 

“I told you. I’m weak that way, “she said, holding herself up on her arms as she lowered her head to kiss him.

“Yeah,” he bit her lower lip. “What should I do about that?” he asked. 

She shrugged. “We’ll have to do it again,” she said, collapsing in breathless laughter when he rolled her over and threatened to start over.

Later, after he hid her ring and turned down the lights, when he came back to bed and she was curled up against him, he wanted to ask her what they had done to her. They had addressed this only in the most superficial way. He knew that he wasn’t ready to hear it. There was so much hate and anger built up and he had to work at keeping it shut away. If he didn’t, he was going to be looking for reasons to go after Flagg and his team. 

 

Her engagement ring was still in its velvet case a month after Lois and Clark’s wedding abruptly ended when Oliver tipped over into the dark side. Between Chloe’s birthday and the wedding, they had spent exactly one day together before Oliver had gone to Metropolis to help Clark and ended up trapped in the Phantom Zone with him. As soon as he got back, he took off again on some mysterious errand that took him to Europe. 

Chloe knew something was off when they were decorating in the chapel, but her uppermost concern was that Oliver was having second thoughts about _them_. When that appeared not to be the case, she thought that they would have time to talk more after the wedding hoopla was over. They were both due a long vacation, and she had started researching some options for a delayed honeymoon. 

The scope of the real problem was revealed when he presented the Gold-K ring to Lois to give to Clark, and it was resolved in a matter of minutes after a brawl that wrecked the chapel but freed Oliver of the influence of the Darkness. 

Time wasn’t a luxury that they had with a planet hurling through space on a collision course for Earth. They did what they did best in a crisis. Oliver stayed in Metropolis to help Clark and Chloe went to Star City to access her Watchtower analog site. The next two weeks were intense. The near collision Clark averted touched off natural disasters, disrupting weather patterns, damaging infrastructure worldwide. Their team was down several players as Kara, Tess, and Booster Gold all disappeared within the same 24-hour period. Clark checked in to report that Lionel Luthor was dead and that Lex was alive.

By the time she got Ollie and Jonn dispatched to Luthor Corp, Lex was already on his way to MetGen with no memory of where he had been, or of anything else. A newly formed super-secret government agency was already in the field, and the Suicide Squad tried to revoke Chloe’s resignation as the scale of the near miss unfolded.

Her recruitment kidnapping unfolded in the early morning hours four days after Clark had taken flight. Bart, AC, and Victor had been dispatched to Alaska following a devastating earthquake. Oliver, Jonn and Clark were working out of Metropolis with Clark chasing tornado damage in the mid-West and Oliver coordinating logistical support for the overwhelmed first responders while Jonn did what he could to help subdue rioters in several cities. Chloe had covered the overnight shift at the paper, filing late breaking stories to the website and cleaning up copy for the early edition and was headed back home when she realized that she had picked up a tail.

Her tires were blown before she registered the sound of the gunshot, and suddenly she was in the middle of a firefight on a public street witnessed by a city crew picking up garbage—they promptly dove for cover. When the Suburban transporting the intercept team of three blew up, and Eric LaSalle, the Suicide Squad’s teleporter materialized on top of her to lock his arms around her and activate his power for emergency egress, Chloe knew that the ‘rescue’ was staged.

LaSalle dropped her on the concrete floor of a warehouse, empty save for a six-foot metal table and two chairs, one of which was occupied by Maxwell Lord. When Flagg sauntered over to hold out his hand to help her to her feet, she resisted the temptation to fight. She had already emptied the clip in the gun she kept in her purse.

“This was not my idea,” Flagg said quietly when she was standing. Just that. He backed away from her immediately.

“Ms. Sullivan,” Maxwell Lord stood, gesturing to the chair across the table from him. “Please join me. We have much to discuss.”

In every circumstance Chloe was aware of that Maxwell Lord used his telepathic abilities to read minds or manipulate his subjects, he needed them sufficiently incapacitated that they could not defend against his mental manipulation. Chloe took a deep breath, pushing her hair out of her eyes. She needed to stall him. 

The best defense was a good offense. “What have you done with Tess Mercer?” she asked. It was a complete shot in the dark, but not outside the realm of possibilities. Checkmate had been after Tess at one time, and they had the resources to make her disappear. The Suicide Squad operated with a degree of autonomy that broadened in the wake of Zod’s attack on the Castle, but Checkmate was the Suicide Squad’s first client.

“Mercer really is missing?” Max cocked his head. “Interesting, but ultimately irrelevant. We know that you are Watchtower,” he said. 

“I don’t believe you,” Chloe bluffed.

“I think you do,” he said coolly. “I’m not opposed to placing our resources at your disposal if finding Mercer is important to you.” He gestured to the empty chair again. “Please. You must be tired. I am, and so is Colonel Flagg. It’s been an exhausting few days. I don’t know how you manage to hold down a demanding job on top of directing operations for your organization.”

She stared at him. She didn’t feel compelled in any way to do what he was telling her to do. “I prefer to stand,” she said. 

A thin-lipped smile appeared briefly. “It’s an old sales technique, you know. Get people to say ‘yes’ to easy things. Get them to do things that are relatively meaningless. Condition them to do what they are told,” he leaned forward. “That’s not what I’m doing. Sit down before I have you handcuffed to the chair.”

Her gaze remained on him. Flagg had his arms crossed over his chest. 

“Colonel?”

Chloe didn’t want to force Flagg to make a choice just yet. She moved forward, not hurrying. When she reached the chair, she sat.

Max smiled again, unpleasantly. “That’s better, wouldn’t you agree?”

“What do you want?” Chloe asked.

“Colonel Flagg has impressed me with his assessment of his team’s capabilities under your leadership,” he said. “Your government wants you, and your assets, to become part of a larger organization equipped to deal with extraordinary events.”

This, again? Seriously? Chloe wondered if they would ever give up, but she wasn’t buying it. Unless they were running serious countermeasures, the GPS tracker in her watch was giving up her location. The splashy gunfight in Star City was the equivalent of waving a big red cape in front of a charging bull. Putting her in a room with a telepath . . . 

She brought her legs up and kicked the edge of the table into Maxwell Lord’s chest, jumping to her feet to grab the metal framed chair, and without giving up any momentum, using it to bludgeon him. 

“Sullivan!” Flagg barked when she slid across the tabletop and kicked her dazed and bleeding victim in the head. 

She ignored him for the moment, pulling a gun out of the shoulder holster under Maxwell Lord’s suit coat. She gripped the barrel, waiting for Lord to shake off the hit. She followed up with the butt of the gun. 

Making the telepath unconscious was her first order of business. She thumbed the safety off. The fact that Flagg hadn’t shot her was telling. “Let me guess. This was an off-book operation? The world’s in a hell of a mess, and lacking any practical skills, this looked like a good time to spring a power-play?”

From the expression on Flagg’s face, Chloe thought she was probably doing pretty well. “It wasn’t a half bad plan,” Flagg said.

“This one is free. Next time?” she gestured to his knee with her gun, “I’ll knee cap you.”

Warp teleported in, and Flagg used a hand signal to tell him to stay back. “For the record, I threatened to quit if I had to work for you again,” he said.

“Colonel?” Warp moved in closer to him as the corner of the warehouse roof was peeled back like a tin can. 

Flagg gave her a questioning look. 

“Get out,” she said, pointing at Lord as she back away. “Take that with you.”

“Yes, m’am,” he relaxed a little. 

Chloe backed up a few more steps, keeping the gun trained on them until Warp took them out a nano-second before Clark scooped her up and went skyward at a trajectory that had them clearing the opening in the ceiling and arching over a desert landscape away towards the sun.

 

Clark flew her to Watchtower in Metropolis. Oliver was as angry as she had ever seen him, but calm. As soon as Watchtower alerted him to what was going on in Star City, he activated the trackers in her phone, watch, and car. Her phone turned up in Boston. Her car was still in the street in Star City, and her watch was in a relatively unpopulated area outside of Flagstaff. He dispatched Bart with some cameras and had eyes on her almost the whole time she was missing.

They knew exactly whom she was dealing with before he sent Clark in to get her with Bart on stand-by. 

Chloe lost her shoes somewhere over Las Vegas, by her best estimate, and she was sure her hair was glued together with the lifeblood of dead insects. Oliver was alternating between hugging her and pulling at her clothes. It took her a second to realize that there was blood on her shirt. She had been grazed by a bullet. She hadn’t felt it and it didn’t hurt until Oliver pulled her jacket off. 

Clark clung to her hand while Oliver worked with a pair of bandage scissors to cut her shirt. Lois blew in a few minutes later, bitching about how no one was answering their phones. 

“Is it bad?” Chloe was asking. Clark looked a little green.

Oliver squeezed her leg. “Through and through,” he said. “Lois? Call Emil. I want him to look at this. I think it’s going to require sutures.”

Chloe looked around at the concerned faces. “Hey, Lo!” she said brightly. “Clark,” she patted his arm, “take a breath before you pass out,” she said helpfully. She grabbed a hold of Oliver’s blood stained sleeve. “I love you, and if you make me sit here while Emil sutures me before I wash the bug juice out of my hair, I will still love you, but you’ll lose a billion hottie points.”

He stared at her for a minute and then pointed at Lois. “Take over,” he said, logging himself off Watchtower duty. 

He helped her climb the stairs to the bathroom. The re-fit on the bathroom had included a generously sized walk-in shower, and at some point, an injury had made getting a shower chair a good idea. After Oliver helped her undress and got her to sit on the shower chair, he undressed and got in with her to help her wash her hair and make sure that she didn’t pass out when he passed her the surgical soap Emil stocked to wash out the wound that left a ugly furrow in her upper arm. She still had some clothes here, and he found a pair of loose workout pants and one of his t-shirts for her to wear while she kept a towel pressed to her injured arm. 

He had gotten awfully quiet while he was toweling her hair. “Oliver?”

“You did good,” he said. “Kind of gave me a heart attack there when you decided to go crazy on Maxwell Lord. How did you know that Flagg wouldn’t shoot you?”

“It wasn’t his op,” she said. “He told me as much when I got there,” she said. Truth was that she hadn’t known. She didn’t want to believe that he would shoot her. 

He finger combed her wet hair and kissed the crown of her head. “Okay,” he said, almost like he was reassuring himself.

“Not really,” she muttered. “It was bad. In Star City. I was scared,” she admitted. 

He rested his hip against the sink and held her with his chin on the top of her head. “I was scared, too,” he said. “I hate your job. I suck at it,” he added. “Not that it is your job, per se, but—“ he shook his head. “Let’s get you patched up, and I’m going to take you home and put you to bed. Okay?”

Which was Oliver’s way of saying that she was about to be on lock-down for as long as he could make it stick. Chloe spent the next ten days in Metropolis, covering Watchtower. Her editor agreed to let her work from Metropolis since it had become the epicenter of the biggest news story of the year. 

In a way that only she could appreciate, it was fun. As much as she was done with Watchtower 24-7, she got a little thrill out of seeing what had been updated and tweaked since she ran the place. It was easy to lose yourself running operations, making for fast, adrenaline charged days topped with the satisfaction of having helped people. Oliver made a point of stopping in between meetings. She didn’t lack for company, though she wasn’t sure how she felt about Lois popping in at will to use Watchtower as an investigative tool. 

They were both in Metropolis when Tess’s body was found in a temporary morgue that had been set up to deal with the fatalities that had piled up in the metropolitan area. According to the tag on her body, she was found in the river downstream from Metropolis. A FEMA mortuary affairs technician made the identification based on DNA. The news of the discovery spread like wildfire from the Daily Planet to the heavily damaged Luthor Corp building.

The coroner examining her remains concluded that she had been stabbed once. The injury severed the right common iliac artery. She would have bled out in a matter of minutes. Mercifully, she was dead before her body was dumped in the river. Her death was ruled a homicide and the Metropolis Police Department opened a case file. They had no leads, and several suspects. Oliver was interviewed as well as Emil, but they could account for themselves on the day Tess disappeared. Lex had been discharged from MetGen, but he claimed that couldn’t remember having a sister, much less having met her. 

Jonn was one of the detectives working the case, and he was present for Lex’s interview. Using his abilities, he was unable to detect any lies or evasions about the extent of his memory loss, but he believed that Lex had known that she was dead.

In addition to the Luthor legacy, Tess had amassed her own tidy fortune. At Christmas, she had set up a trust from her personal assets and left Oliver and his designee as the trustee. It was money she set aside for Connor. Her last will divided the Luthor estate between ten large and well-funded charities, which meant that now Lex had to fight to keep his family fortune intact and to establish his right to it. The Luthor Corp board, already rattled by being taken in by a phony Lionel Luthor, balked at the idea that Lex was back, and appointed Oliver sole Chief Executive Officer.

It bought him time to start unwinding his own investment in Luthor Corp, separating Luthor Corp from Queen Industries, and dismantling or selling off Luthor Corp units that had been used by Lex to pursue his interest in the effects of meteor rocks and meta-humans. 

By late June, Chloe was back to work in Star City and Oliver was commuting back and forth. They were both exhausted. 

 

Someone was pounding on his door. Oliver ignored it, sitting on his lonely sofa in his stupidly impersonal condo, wondering how he had fucked up so spectacularly this late in the game. 

The condo sucked, even if it combined the conveniences of living in a luxury hotel, with amenities like a spa, three four-star restaurants, and twenty-four hour concierge service, and proximity to work. It screamed bachelor pad, if you didn’t count the silver framed photo from Chloe’s birthday sitting on the mantel to announce to visitors that he was all coupled up. 

A brief, wistful smile appeared as he remembered the way she had taken in the big, cold, two story window and minimalist vibe and told him that it was her dream to live at Starfleet Academy. It was cute. Especially when she started going on about how he was going to warm up to the place when she got her own miniskirted dress and boots—that was fucking adorable. It made him feel like it was going to be all right that their first home together was an apartment with a market value of 7.5 million dollars that he acquired with vague visions of bikini wearing babes and pool parties. 

His phone was vibrating and he knew it wasn’t his wife—if she was still his wife—but his stupid heart still went a little crazy, and he looked at the phone only to be crushed by finding that it was one of his in-laws. 

He made a face. If Chloe divorced him, he wasn’t going to fight her for Lois. This was all Lois’ fault. She couldn’t leave well enough alone. Lois had arrived on their doorstep practically vibrating with glee because she figured out something that had eluded Chloe up to that point. She just had to keep asking her stupid questions about how they had managed to get married without a marriage license in a state with a three-day waiting period and no 24-hour wedding chapels operating in the metropolitan area.

It was also a little bit his fault. As much as he wanted to blame EvilOliver, his Omega branded alter ego from a few months ago, he was pretty sure that maneuvering Chloe into marrying him was all him. EvilOliver could take the rap for not telling anyone that he was infected with the darkness. EvilOliver was also responsible for acquiring gold K, plotting with Darkseid’s apostles to de-power Clark, crippling Watchtower, and going super-villain during the ring exchange at the altar. 

EvilOliver was kind of a dick—except probably very robotic. He had seen the footage from his Watchtower sabotage moment, and Oliver thought EvilOliver looked like a robot. 

Running off to follow Clark into the Phantom Zone, taking off after Orion’s bow without any backup to save himself from the darkness, and wishing his way into marrying Chloe when he thought that she was about to pull a runner on him—that sounded an awful lot like stuff that _he_ would have done. 

The pounding resumed. He spitefully hoped that it hurt. A lot.

“C’mon, Ollie!” Lois yelled at him.

He frowned. Why wasn’t Lois with Chloe? She had looked so wounded when he admitted that their wedding was the result of a favor Zatanna owed him. 

They were supposed to be visiting a jeweler today. They were supposed to be picking up their rings. The appointment had been made over a month ago, and cancelled at the last minute since Chloe was in Metropolis recovering from being shot. They rescheduled, which took weeks to work out with their schedules, and he was late getting back from a business trip in Asia. He made an appointment for Saturday, and warned everyone to leave them the hell alone.

The rings were picked out. Technically, they didn’t need to be together when they were picked up, but Chloe wanted them to be together. She said that when they put their rings on, that was it. They weren’t coming off again for anything. A tastefully brief announcement would be released on Monday morning stating the fact of their marriage at the same time that their fully executed marriage certificate was being filled with the city clerk in Metropolis, nearly five months to the day after he had applied for the license. 

Naturally, Lois was on their doorstep at ten in the morning to tag along and destroy his marriage. They hadn’t made it to the jeweler, or lunch. When Lois announced that she wanted to go shopping to start working on the all expenses paid wedding of her dreams that Oliver had offered with his abject apologies for ruining Lois and Clark’s wedding, he called Clark and told him to come pick Lois up because she was not highjacking this particular day.

He was too late. Lois didn’t leave until she haggled him out of a credit card to go shopping, and Chloe was way too quiet. 

“I don’t even remember getting married,” she said wearily, “and apparently I’m planning a wedding extravaganza for Lois,” she said. “I’ll just shoe-horn that in between my two full-time jobs. It is a good thing you were thinking ahead because when would I ever had time to form the intention to get married. Assuming that I did,” she finished, withering sarcasm deflating into weary disappointment.

Actually, it wasn’t that short and to the point. There was a completely horrible argument that escalated to epic proportions. He liked his version of it better because it cut out the parts where he pointed out that if she was over-committed it was because she was too quick to consider their time something she could do without, and she refused to let anyone help her. Then he then accused her of sabotaging them.

He was sure that he would have apologized if she hadn’t grabbed her purse, her keys, her phone, and told him that she would call him when she figured out what she wanted to do about them. 

What he actually said was something like, “Fine, while you are at it, grow up. We’re married. If you really don’t want to be married to me, have the guts to look me in the eye and tell me that.”

That re-ignited the argument. She had some valid points about how much it meant to her that he understood that she actually liked being his girlfriend, even if he thought it was juvenile, and how much it bothered her that she couldn’t remember how they got married. Ugh! A knot of anxiety and guilt was taking up residence in his gut. 

There was a much softer and distinctly apologetic tapping on the sliding glass door from the terrace. Oliver looked up to see that Clark was out there. He was in jeans and a t-shirt, so not on the job. _Jerk_. Oliver was pretty sure Clark would have Defcon-2’d the situation and broken out the cape if Lois told Clark that she needed time to think about whether she wanted a divorce.

Mitigating Clark’s jerk-ness was the fact that Oliver ruined their wedding, so there wasn’t any chance Lois could divorce him, and Clark had waved it off like it was nothing. Clark had been there for him through the whole ordeal with Chloe leaving, and his own impulsive decision to tell the world that he was Green Arrow. He’d also swooped in like a big damn hero and flown Chloe back to him after she beat up Maxwell Lord. 

He was sure that he made Emil his best man, and he was glad that Clark didn’t remember that. It might have hurt his feelings. 

Clark gestured to the door that they both knew that he could have down with very little effort. He gave Oliver the look that Chloe swore was another one of his powers. It started with a mushy core of empathy, and swelled to include his stupid optimism. Oliver had a nice moment in the streets of Metropolis when Clark saved the world and defeated the darkness that was drawing Apokolips to Earth like a giant refrigerator magnet. Clark flew, with his big stupid cape unfurling as he pushed the on-coming planet away and the darkness lifted in a celebration that engaged the whole planet. 

Sometimes Oliver thought it went to Clark’s head a little bit. He didn’t care if Clark ripped the door off, except, then it would probably rain and a vengeful deity would see him, and he’d get struck by lightning. _Oliver_ , not Clark. What Clark would get would be slightly singed with a pithy tale to tell future wanna-be heros about hubris. Or the folly of forming a wish in Zatanna’s presence. 

Or, possibly the hardship of falling in love with one of the Sullivan-Lane women. All valid points.

He went to the door. “I wish I was drunk. Don’t hug me,” he warned through the glass, since Clark could hear him. He opened the door. 

“Sure . . .” Clark awkwardly patted his arm. “Lois has to . . . use the facilities,” he said as he strode past Oliver to let Lois in.

Oliver went out on the terrace. There was a blinding flash of white from Bart’s chest as he paused in the act of dropping his trousers. He pointed at the pool. 

Wow, his misery was making the rounds fast if Bart was here, to console him, eat his food, swim in his pool, and revel in the drama.

Clark and Lois left him alone on the terrace long enough for Oliver to wonder where they were. Clark came out a few minutes later holding two beers. Oliver perked up for a second when he saw that it was Double Bastard Ale. Kansas wasn’t known for its microbreweries, but Double Bastard was a familiar and thoughtful consolation for his horrible day.

A dripping wet Bart zipped past them as Oliver reached for a bottle. He tapped the neck of the bottle Clark held with his in a mocking toast. “Here’s to a mind fuck of a day. Nice of you to drop by.”

A bag of spicy Thai chips hit him in the chest before Bart flung himself in a chair and put his feet up. He had a beer and a steaming mound of steak fajita nachos. Oliver recognized the platter from the kitchen of one of the three restaurants in the hotel. 

“You don’t have to tell us what happened,” Bart said suddenly. 

Oliver gave him a sideways look. “Thanks . . . I think.”

If Clark was here because of Lois, Bart was here because of Chloe, Oliver realized. “Where did you take her?” he asked.

“Gotham,” Bart said. “She wanted to talk to Zee.”

Oliver took a sip, thinking about that. It didn’t make a lot of sense to him. What could Zatanna tell her that she didn’t already know? He thought she was going to take off again, so he called Zatanna and cashed in the wish she promised him when he stole her father’s book back from Lex. Faster than you could say _yllatnedicca (no esoprup) deirram_ backward while drunk, he was waking up in a lime green tux. 

The instant Lois called it to his attention, Oliver knew that they there was only one reason why he would have been dressed like that. Was he sorry? _Hell, no!_ He didn’t even spare a nano-second of regret over the ruffled tux shirt, or the fact that he looked like an advertisement for chocolate mint candy. On the other hand, he distinctly remembered forming the intention to spend the rest of his life with Chloe, and it was a big moment for him. 

And, it would have been nice to remember some small part of it. The little bit that had survived on Emil’s camera looked like fun. 

Bart finished the nachos and burped, thumping his chest with his fist to shake out another one. “En fuego,” he announced.

“It’s going to be okay, Oliver,” Clark said. “Chloe loves you.”

Oliver snorted. “Yeah, that’s reassuring.”

Bart gave Clark a pitying look. “Yeah, Stretch,” he said, agreeing with Oliver. “It’s that kind of thinking that got all of this started. Chloe and Oliver don’t do ‘I love you’. They do mortal peril with some sappy O Henry.” 

Clark and Oliver exchanged puzzled looks across the table. Oliver looked over at Bart, who was trying not to look too pleased with himself. “I’m working on my GED. I figured if Mia could do it, I ought to at least try.”

Clark brightened. “Good for you, Bart. I’m proud of you.”

Oliver realized every encouraging speech he ever gave to Mia really did make him sound like Clark, and he opened the potato chip bag, feeling a lot more depressed. “Yeah, good for you, Bart,” he echoed with little enthusiasm. When he looked up Bart gave him a head tilt and held his hand up for a fist bump. 

“C’mon. It will make you feel better,” he coaxed.

Oliver gave him his fist bump, Bart stole his chips, and he did feel a little better when Bart withered under Clark’s disapproval and gave the chips back.

“I think Zatanna’s magic is defective,” Clark announced. “She had Chloe wishing that she was Lois, but that wasn’t really what Chloe wanted. She had me wishing that I was just a normal reporter, which also wasn’t exactly right. And,” his nose wrinkled, “there is no way you wished that you’d have a wedding that you didn’t remember.”

“True,” Bart nodded. “I was kind of relieved to hear that there wasn’t a video. I figured you’d make us all watch it repeatedly. Like a girl.”

Lois showed up in time to slap the back of Bart’s head for that remark. 

“Ow!” Bart gave Lois a wary look. “What was that for?”

“Have some respect for my baby cousin’s happily ever after,” she scolded. “Oliver Queen does not indulge in cheap, over-the-top romantic gestures.”

Oliver and Clark exchanged surprised looks. Oliver shook his head. He had no idea what Lois was going on about. Apparently the way he high-jacked Lois’s blind date in order to take a hail Mary pass at re-kindling something with her made absolutely no impression on her. Or announcing to the world that he was Green Arrow to take the secret of keeping his secret off the table in the slim hope of bring Chloe home. Or sponsoring an exhibit around the theme of eternal love, so she’d know that he was waiting. Or pining . . . he had done a lot of pining. 

She offered Oliver a semi-apologetic look. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Go find my cousin and remind her that you are the love of her life.”

He was willing to give her points for clinging relentlessly to the idea that Chloe would forgive him for anything. Of course, it helped that Chloe was a lot more reasonable than Lois. 

She was going to forgive him, he realized after a minute. She would talk to Zatanna and then she would be back. 

Oliver heaved a sigh. “If I do, will you promise me that when I come back, you won’t be here?”

Bart winced. “Dude. Harsh!”

Clark hid a smile as Lois glared at Oliver and Oliver refused to back down. 

“Tell me what you are going to say,” Lois negotiated.

Clark gave her a disapproving look. 

Lois gave up. “Fine! We’ll go home.”

Oliver gave her a nod. “Thank you.” He sat there a moment, thinking, before he turned to Bart.” Why is Zatanna in Gotham?”

“Benefit for the Children’s Hospital,” Bart mumbled as he licked the seasoning from the chips off his fingers. “You want some of these?” he asked with his hand back in the bag.

“I’ll pass.”

“I could eat,” she told Clark, perching on the arm of his chair.

He patted her knee. “Do you want me to—“ he made a lift off gesture with his hand.

“No,” Oliver shook his head, finishing his beer. He waggled the bottle. “Thanks. I’ve got this. Go home—just don’t—“ he paused to look over at Bart to include him, “no whooshing in to carry my wife off, okay?”

Clark grinned. “Barring life threatening emergency, I can do that,” he agreed.

Bart made a face. “I’m going to have to turn off my phone,” he admitted. “I’m weak. I can’t say no.”

 

The bartender making her drink dropped four pomegranate seeds in the bottom before executing a neat pour that cut off without touching the rim of the glass. Flicking a pristine white cocktail napkin on the black walnut surface of the bar, he waited a beat to make eye contact and dropped a fifth pomegranate seed in with a wink. 

Chloe Sullivan’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. She was reasonably certain that Star City’s bartenders considered it an occupational hazard to flirt with her—no one outside their circle of close friends knew they were married, but it seemed like the population of Star City knew that she was Oliver Queen/Green Arrow’s girlfriend. But this was Gotham. They had their own resident billionaire playboy and there was probably a book open on how fast she would succumb to the charms of their host, purely based on a corrupt, creepy version of hometown pride. The people of Gotham were weird that way. They hated and loved their billionaire playboy in an unsettlingly dark and seemingly one-sided way much as they trusted and feared his alter ego.

It wasn’t nearly as one-sided as they thought.

She took a cautious sip of the martini and found it sufficiently tart, noting the way the bartender’s gaze shifted from her to the man who stepped up to join her at the bar. 

Her second sip was meant to fortify her. When she set her glass down on the napkin, his hand was there, palm up, She was wearing an inch wide bracelet of platinum set precious and semi-precious stones in varying sizes, cuts, and shades of green. It was her birthday present when she refused to accept an engagement ring. His index finger curled to lightly stroke her wrist above the bracelet. Her heart sped up. She wasn’t even a little drunk, and she was already giddy. Goosebumps erupted everywhere. She was pretty sure that her brain was shivering even before she tipped her head, lifting her eyelids to take him in. 

Oliver claimed that wearing a tux made him feel like he was in a costume—not that Chloe believed it for a minute. He was wearing black trousers, a black velvet suit coat, and a shirt with a subtle grey on black stripe left open at the collar. For a man who worked a desk job by day, he looked relaxed, tanned, and ridiculously fit. He didn’t look mad about her bolting to get to the bottom of his Machiavellian plot to make her marry him immediately. Or worried. He looked . . . he looked . . . 

When Zatanna insisted that she come along to this little shindig at Wayne Manor, Chloe called her stylist, and like magic, a cocktail dress with shoes, accessories and appropriate undergarments was at her door three hours later. Her black dress was as simple as it got—a fitted bodice, with more than a hint of cleavage and a softly pleated skirt that almost reached her knee. 

“Hey, Gorgeous,” her husband said, tearing his eyes away from her cleavage. “Look at you, accessorizing with your breasts,” he teased. 

Yeah, he looked like he was checking out her cleavage. Laughter bubbled up when he gave her a small smile at being caught ogling her. 

The bartender poured Scotch over a golf ball sized sphere of ice for Oliver and after he thanked the bartender and collected his drink, Oliver deftly steered her away from the bar. 

“Ollie?”

“Hm?” he tilted his head. 

“Tell me you brought my rings,” she said. There was no point in continuing the argument. She was waving her white flag. He wasn’t perfect. Neither was she. 

Their eyes met. “I get it,” she said. “I’m not even sure why I was mad.”

He leaned forward. “Because I was kind of being a jackass. I panicked.”

“I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” she said. “It’s okay.”

He looked around, and led her over to a small side table, setting his glass down.

“It’s okay if you didn’t,” she said hastily. He was here. That was all that mattered.

He smiled. “Are you staying here or at the Gotham Grand?”

It sounded like a trick question to Chloe. “Here,” she said.

He pulled their rings out of his pants pocket, flicking some lint off her diamond ring. “Pocket lint,” he shrugged, gesturing for her hand.

She had her crappy wedding band on, and he smiled when he saw it. “God, I love you.”

Chloe laughed nervously and pulled it off, slipping it back into her purse. “Gimme,” she said.

He gave her an exasperated look. “Hand,” he insisted. “How does this go?”

“I—wedding ring first, then the engagement ring.” She didn’t care. 

He slipped the wedding band over her knuckle. It was platinum with a few seemingly random bead set diamonds. She caught a glimpse of the engagement ring when he slipped it up to her knuckle. 

“Wait,” she pulled her hand back, stopping him. 

Taking a sip of her martini and a couple of quick breaths. She clenched her fists to keep her hands from shaking, and then shook them out for good measure.

Her little freak out over the ring that he had bought months ago, and that she refused to be tempted by until now, made him start laughing. 

His ring was resting on the table, and she picked it up. “Shut up, and tell me that you love me more than air, Ollie,” she said, holding out her hand for his.

“Air and water, you nut case,” he said. Chloe rubbed her finger over the band when it was in place on his hand. He had slipped her engagement ring on his pinky for safekeeping while she was freaking out. He waggled it for her. “Ready?”

It wasn’t the ring, exactly. It was just very clear to her that however he asked her—if he asked her at all, because for all they knew, she asked him—that she wanted to marry him. Good thing they already had that covered.

She nodded, and he took the ring off his finger and slid it into place, snug against her wedding band.

“We’re married,” she said.

“Five months, but,” he shrugged, “who is counting?”

Their lips met in a long, slow, tenderly searing kiss. 

“Let’s get out of here,” she suggested. 

He shook his head. “Not a chance,” he said softly, trying not to laugh. She was completely oblivious to the fact that their little ring exchange had a ballroom of people buzzing excitedly.

“No?” she pouted.

“People want to meet you,” he murmured, drawing her attention to their interested audience.

Her eyes widened. “Oh. _Oh!_ ” her lips pursed. “Okay . . . so we make one pass of the room, working our way to the nearest exit,” she said, planning their escape.

“Good plan,” he murmured. 

Zatanna reached them first. “Oliver,” she rubbed his arm. “Congratulations,” she said. “Don’t ever ask me for a wish again,” she warned.

“Won’t need to,” he said.

They circulated, sampling hors d’oeuvres, mingling with the other guests. There were a few familiar faces. Classmates of Oliver’s from prep school or college, a few people in business that she had been introduced to at other functions as Oliver’s girlfriend. Happy surprise—Victor was there, and pulled her away from Oliver to introduce her to his date. Their marriage was old news to him. Oliver caught up to them and they ended up back at the bar since Sarah wanted to try the pomegranate martini that Chloe had finished. 

Bruce joined them, giving Chloe a mocking look. “I hear congratulations are in order,” he said.

“You know my husband, Oliver,” Chloe said without stumbling over it even a little.

Oliver paused, looking from Chloe to Bruce and back to Chloe. “Interesting. You know each other?”

Bruce shrugged. “Congratulations,” he offered.

A flash went off as a photographer got a picture.

Chloe grabbed Oliver’s arm. “This is going to be in the papers in the morning.”

Victor tapped his pocket. “It’s already out there, Chloe,” he said.

“Oh, crap! I let everyone in the universe scoop Lois and my own paper,” Chloe groaned. 

 

For a while, their life stayed crazy. They flew from Gotham to Metropolis to file their marriage certificate. Her boss was understanding, in a teeth grinding sort of way that gave Chloe a preview of things to come. For The Star City Register, Chloe Sullivan-Queen was not an employee that could be fired. Not unless she did something indefensible. It gave her an uneasy feeling. Not that there was a lot that she could do about it right away other than quietly move from full-time reporting to free-lancing, which she did in July with little fanfare. 

Her League related work was taking up more time. Chloe was flying back from D.C.. After she was made aware of the kidnapping incident, Martha Kent decided that it was time for a little summit with the elements of the shadowy organizations that took too keen an interest in their world. Chloe was roped in along with Emil. She also spent some time catching up with the Kents in the nation’s capital. Her flight crew was based out of Denver, and when she learned that Oliver was due in to change planes in Denver to fly to Metropolis, she reorganized her calendar to meet him in Denver.

Oliver found his wife sitting on a picnic table inside the World War II era terminal of the small, private airfield where they had their first non-date. Chloe was predictably, sipping coffee out of a Styrofoam cup while talking on her cellphone. She was also looking for him, and spotted him quickly. She jumped down from her perch as his stride lengthened. She ended her call, pocketing her cell as she came to meet him.

The humor of it reached him first. There was just something about arrival and departures, whether it was a bus terminal, a train station, a largely empty, barebones archaic terminal, or the concourse of a modern airport. And if you ran around in green leather to dispense justice as your hobby, then your wife could not possibly think you were going to pass it up, Oliver thought. He gestured for her to come get him.

Chloe started laughing and broke into a stagey reunion run. When she reached him, he swept her up and kissed the hell out of her. Not to be outdone, she wrapped her arms around him and gave as good as she got, even if she was snickering at how ridiculous they were. 

When their lips parted, Oliver cupped her cheek. “How long has it been?”

She started to answer and then paused, thinking about it. “Wow. Seven days?”

“More like eight—“

He had crossed the International Date Line to get home from a trip on behalf of QI to South Korea. Her fingers played with the hair at the nape of his neck. “Miss me?” she asked hopefully.

“Like you would not believe, though I’m glad that you couldn’t come with me. The weather was terrible, and the smoking—everywhere,” he complained, running his hands down her back. “I know you missed me.”

She rolled her eyes. “I did, but I was still mad at Bart for being Bart. He just chose to interpret how mad I was that way.”

They had started work renovating Oliver’s family home in July, and were a few weeks from moving out of their condo. Chloe was in the habit of swimming laps when she came home from work. She was finishing her laps and leaving the pool when she was surprised by Bart, dropping his pants at the shallow end of the pool. 

She screamed. Bart screamed. Ollie’s stalker repelled in to save her and concussed himself on the bottom of the pool when he misjudged what would happen when descending from a distance of twenty feet into shallow water. Bart had to fish him out of the pool, and they immediately bonded. When they were still there an hour later, swapping stories over nachos and beers, Chloe kicked both of them out. 

Bart chose to interpret her lack of appreciation for being a big hero magnet as missing Oliver. 

A funny thing happened after the repeal of the Vigilante Registration Act and Clark’s dramatic debut as the world’s greatest hero. Costumed crusaders became popular. Really popular. There was a team in Las Vegas with a reality show on cable, two dramas in development about fictional superheroes on the major networks, and premium cable had a late night series about a trio of heroines that included a character that had Dinah grumbling about stealing her look. 

Strangely enough, Tess had the foresight to plan around that possibility. She had pulled together a legal team to work on trademarks and copyrights to costumes and code names. After her death, they needed someone to take charge over and Gabe Sullivan was now working for JL Industries scouting locations for manufacturing products ranging from apparel to lunch boxes and backpacks. Superheroes had fans—and since Oliver’s dual identity was known—stalkers. His biggest fan in Star City was a wanna-be archer on a red motorcycle Star City’s CapeBlog had dubbed ‘Red Arrow’. 

Seeing Oliver frown, and guessing that another chat about a security detail was pending, Chloe shook her head. “Harmless,” she assured him. 

His lip curled. “Harmless, she says,” he muttered. “Okay. Not in love with the idea that someone is watching you as you putter around the house. And by putter around the house, I mean wander around in two tiny scraps of—“

Her raised eyebrow reminded him that he was the one who took one look at her perfectly serviceable one-piece bathing suit and acted like she was going to break out a flannel nightgown next.

Chloe grinned when he surrendered without another word on that point. She was finally comfortable with her body after struggling through her teens and early twenties with some body image issues. 

“He’s really cute, too. I think I could get on board with the bodyguard idea that is already rolling around in your head. We can hire Roy, since he’s already demonstrated a willingness to jump off buildings to save me.”

“Please don’t tell me that you are on a first name basis with my stalker,” he groaned. 

She leaned into him, kissing the corner of his mouth. “I’m kind of starving,” she hinted. “Where are the gourmet corndogs and the artichoke fritters? I did an extra 20 minutes on the bike for them this morning.”

He kissed her again to make up for the bad news that he had to deliver. 

“Gourmet fried food miracles were Julia’s genius idea. I’m pretty helpless when it comes to arranging my own dates.”

Chloe pulled her phone out. “Thank God, she’s on speed dial.”

 

Six months after Tess disappeared, Chloe found an email in Tess’s draft folder on the Watchtower server telling them that Lionel had managed to bring back one of Lex’s clones and that she had a plan. She was going to find Lex and dose him with a drug that had been developed by Summerholt to erase memories. She warned them that Oliver was infected with the darkness, and that he had disabled Watchtower—but she was sure that Chloe and Clark would find a way to save him. 

She asked that they continue to guide and protect Connor and to give Lex a chance to realize his potential without the shadow of Lionel’s influence.

Oliver was finishing packing up his office at Luthor Corp. The doors to his office had been left open to allow people to drop in to say goodbye. Lex had gained control of the company through the courts and mediation with the board. He was in the process of dismantling the company to create a new company he was calling LexCorp. 

The damage caused by the near miss with Apokolips had been as extensive as Dark Thursday. Now that QI was nearly free of Luthor Corp, Oliver’s attention was focused on reconstruction projects. The geo-thermal plant disaster recovery was admired for the quick clean up and turn around on the property as well as the benefits to the community that accrued from the multi-phase mixed-use development. While Lex was erasing LuthorCorp and creating a company with a smaller footprint, Qi was expanding.

QI would continue to have a presence in Metropolis, but they were moving into a new office park on the geo-thermal plant redevelopment. The board was hosting a little reception for Oliver in the lobby. With the last of his boxes packed, he started down the hall carrying a bottle of wine he had brought to work years ago to celebrate the merger with Tess. 

He paused at the double doors to the boardroom, pushing them open to see his parting gift—a portrait of Tess Mercer waiting on the helipad on the roof of the building with the wind whipping her hair from her face and the city laid out around her. He had the maintenance team bolt that motherfucker to the wall. He walked in to look at it one last time.

It was a great photo. Tess had just suckered him into making a ten billion dollar investment that gave them equal standing. She had been betrayed by Lex, and responded by burying him. She had the look of a woman who would never look back. It wasn’t how he remembered her, but it felt right to remember her like this here, at the company that she took over and led so ably. 

When he turned back to the door, he found Lex standing there, watching him closely, rubbing the hand he kept gloved. It never failed to remind Oliver of the moment when he placed Toyman’s bomb on the steel table next to Lex. He had been utterly helpless, strapped into a padded Stryker frame that could be raised to approximate a standing position. He was wearing a ring with a green Kryptonite stone on that hand. Oliver had pried it off and tucked it in his pocket. 

“No last words?” was all he said to Lex. When Lex only glared at him, he pulled his improvised dart out of the toy monkey’s chest, flipped back his hood and took off his glasses to give Lex one last mocking salute before he turned and walked away.

Did he regret it? Yeah. He also knew that for his own self-preservation, keeping some distance from Lex was crucial. They would never be able to prove it, but Oliver was sure that Lex had killed Tess. The email Chloe found put her squarely in his path. Tess had to have known how dangerous it was to confront Lex. He understood that it was a risk she accepted to give Lex a clean slate.

Clark got it. So did Chloe. They saw things in the Lex that they knew in Smallville that were worth saving. Looking at him now, Oliver still didn’t see it.

“I thought I’d walk down with you,” Lex said.

Oliver left the bottle under Tess’s portrait, and if Lex thought anything of this obviously sentimental gesture, he kept it to himself while they waited for the elevator. 

When they boarded, Lex swiped his key card, overriding any calls on the elevator for service on the way to the lobby. 

“Emil Hamilton?” Lex said. “I see that he’s accepted an offer to direct research at STAR Labs. You’re acquainted, aren’t you?”

“We play golf,” Oliver said. Emil’s new job meant that he would be relocating to Star City. A STAR Labs research facility was part of the 3rd phase of the development on the geo-thermal plant site. Emil was moving into their condo in the city.

“We went to school together,” Lex said. “You were romantically involved with my late sister.”

According to Dr. Fate, Lex Luthor was Superman’s ultimate opponent. Oliver was done with Lex. His questions about a past that Tess had erased would have to go unanswered.

Frustrated by Oliver’s cool refusal to discuss their past, Lex scowled. “I keep finding threads that connect me to you, in some way. My last ex-wife was from Smallville. Your wife is from Smallville and was the maid of honor at our wedding. She used to work for me—“

Oliver took a deep breath. “We’re done, Lex,” he said. “I don’t how she did it, but Tess gave up her life to give you a clean slate. Word of advice: use it. Be the better man she thought you could be if you weren’t influenced by Lionel and the terrible things that _you_ did. Stay away from my wife.”

The doors opened to the lobby and Oliver stepped out. He had some brilliant ups and downs in this building. Lex’s presence at his back was almost forgotten when he spotted Chloe. She was leaning against the back of an oversized sofa, chatting with Lois, and Julia Collins-Henry. Julia had married her long-time boyfriend and he had passed his bar exam over the summer. She resigned from Luthor Corp to take a position with QI and moving across the river into the new building. 

Lois’s presence more or less insured that Lex would wander off. Lois had all but publicly accused him of murdering Tess, and Lex had a standing order with security that she was not allowed past the lobby. 

The chair of the Luthor Corp board gave a little speech that had a slightly valedictorian quality given that Luthor Corp was about to disappear. She talked about the rough beginning, and the challenges of merging two very different companies. She pointed to their accomplishments. She talked about how they had emerged from the geo-thermal plant disaster and the RAO Tower debacle. When she turned it over to Oliver, he started by pointing out for two straight years nothing had blown up—which got a laugh.

He knew that there was a lot of uncertainty for the Luthor Corp employees who would remain behind. He found it hard to stick to the script for these kinds of events, but he managed to hit the right notes about the value of his time at Luthor Corp and his appreciation of the people who worked there, and his best wishes for future.

They slipped away for lunch with the League. After they had lunch, the plane that would carry them to Metropolis was fueled and ready to go. They checked their respective phones, and turned them off. 

“We should go camping,” Oliver said after they were on board and settled in to taxi to the runway. 

Chloe did a head tilt. “Camping like ‘oh, look, a quaintly rustic place with indoor plumbing’ or something that requires a sleeping bag and a tolerance for bugs, and no plumbing?”

He shook his head at her. “Okay, I see where you are going with this. So if we ever go camping . . . rent an RV?”

She smiled. “I could go for a little cabin out in the middle of nowhere,” she hinted.

The house Oliver had lived in with his parents was north of Star City. After crossing the Star Bridge, it was a ten-minute drive from exit 220, through a sleepy little village built around a Spanish mission, and up a winding road that zigzagged up a hill to a house tucked into the woods. Chloe’s first impression that the house was a part of the woods, wasn’t that far off. Squirrels had colonized the attic and there was a fifteen-foot tall tree rooted in a damaged section of the second floor, growing out through a broken window. 

On the drive side of the house, it also looked a lot smaller than it was. The ocean view side of the house redefined the scale. As soon as the squirrels were banished and the house was habitable, they had started spending weekends there amid the restoration work. 

“I like it,” he said, taking her left hand in his. She was wearing her wedding and engagement ring—the catalyst of their epic fight over the wedding that he had engineered with Zatanna’s help. 

“It feels like we are really leaving this time,” he said. “Are you okay with that?”

Chloe nodded. “Like you said,” she alluded to his farewell speech, “We have friends and family in Metropolis, and we’ll be back. Lois and Clark are going to want to host Thanksgiving,” she predicted.

He smiled. “Yeah . . . so, Christmas? And we make that a little test run on having a party, then in February, I’d like to have a party for our first anniversary.”

Her eyebrows rose, but she was smiling. “Aw! That’s a lot of tempting fate with the planning ahead,” she teased.

He nodded. “True,” he tilted his head toward her. “Save the date?”

She smiled back. “Absolutely.”

 

On the morning of their first anniversary, Oliver woke up to the sight of his wife, watching him sleep. She was lying on her stomach with her arms crossed beneath her chin on top of a pillow. And, happy anniversary to him, she was naked, covered only by the sheet that covered him to the waist. 

“I’m pretty sure that we talked about this,” he said.

“We did?”

He nodded. “Yep. I think I told you that it was okay if you wanted to stay over as long as you didn’t do something creepy like watch me sleep.”

“There are a dozen people in the kitchen,” she reported. “I got bored.”

They had a full house and a full guesthouse of company. He made a face. This was all on him. Before the news of their wedding broke, he had already started thinking about how it was going to play out. Worst-case scenario: Chloe would freak out and actually beat him to death with one of her stilettos—or disappear on him again. When she held together the two pieces of their wedding certificate and looked up at him through her eyelashes—they left a lot unsaid, but it felt like that was the moment when they both were on the same page about being together.

Their friends thought it was hilariously appropriate that they accidently got married. 

His father-in-law thought it was hilarious that Chloe thought it was an accident. 

And while he was all for telling the rest of the world to mind their own business, eventually they were going to have kids. 

What kind of example would it set for them to have parents who couldn’t remember getting married? 

He wound a lock of her hair around his finger, tugging playfully. “C’mere,” he invited.

“What?” she gave him a shocked look. “We are getting married in ten hours, Oliver,” she said. “You’ll have to wait.”

“We’re renewing our vows,” he protested. “It’s not the same thing. We are married. I’m very married to you. Right now.”

“Yeah,” she huffed. “Let’s not put the hex on it, Ollie.”

“That’s not as funny as you think it is,” he told her.

She laughed at him anyway. “It is.”

“Not so much,” he grumbled. “I’m pretty sure that was at least 60% EvilOliver,” he told her, sitting up and reaching behind to rearrange their pillows. “Did they give you coffee?” he asked, patting the spot he made for her next to him because he knew exactly how she liked her pillows arranged. 

She cupped his jaw and kissed him. “I love you,” she said.

He nodded. “Yeah . . . I’m pretty good at this,” he murmured, kissing the top of her head when she settled in beside him. “No coffee?” he looked sideways at her.

She avoided his gaze, ducking her head to rest her cheek on his shoulder. According to the clock beside the bed it was a little after eight. They had been up late last night with Emil, Lois, and Clark, and then Mia when she got home from her date with the menace that Oliver dubbed Grand Theft Auto thirty seconds after he met him. 

They were having their party at his family home outside of Star City. The renovated house had six guest suites in addition to the master bedroom, buffered by a common sitting room and his and her home offices. 

“How much longer do we have before someone decides to come looking for us?” he asked.

“Hard to say with Lois and Mia here,” she tilted her head back. “Why are we doing this again?”

“Photo op,” he supplied. “I want to have a picture of my beautiful wife gazing adorningly at me,” he explained while striking a chin up pose. “Kind of like that,” he teased. 

“Recording for posterity something unlikely to occur in real life?” she retorted.

“Ouch!” he joked, and then pointed at his chest. “I have feelings . . .” when she ducked her head again, he frowned. “Hey, all kidding aside, what’s wrong?”

She started to shake her head, and then closed her eyes. A shaky breath followed by another had him wrapping his arms around her. “Chloe?”

“It’s stupid,” she began.

“Okay—“ he tried to get her to look at him. “C’mon. Work with me. You are freaking me out,” he muttered.

“Do I seem different to you?” she asked.

“No . . . yeah? A little stressed?” he guessed. “Is this about the pimple?”

Her head popped up. “I have a pimple, too?”

His mouth fell open. Oh, crap! “It’s tiny,” he soothed. 

“My boobs are too big,” she said.

“Oh,” he kissed her tiny red bump. It wasn’t gross, yet, “yeah, I did notice that,” he admitted. “I think it means that you are pregnant,” he told her. 

She rolled her eyes. “That’s what you get out of that? I have a six thousand dollar dress in my closet, Ollie. I’m going to look,” she made an overflowing gesture.

“You are putting me in my happy place,” he confided. “It’s okay for you to look hot, but not to look pregnant. You have to think about our kids,” he admonished.

 

“I find it ironic that the man who singlehandedly ruined my first attempt to marry the love of my life managed to accidentally-on-purpose drunk marry my cousin, and on the follow up? The perfect vow renewal,” Lois Lane observed.

The terrace at the back of Oliver’s family home ran the length of the house. The upper level of the terrace connected directly to the house under a pergola that was a recent addition in the Oliver and Chloe summer renovation. Huge floor to ceiling glass windows rotated on hinges to slide back into the recesses of evenly spaced support columns. On the lower level, there was a pool and a cozy little alcove with an outdoor fireplace. 

The room adjacent to the terrace normally configured as a great room, had been cleared to make way for tables spilling out onto the terrace dressed in white tablecloths and set with china. They were still hours from the big event, but Lois could see how it was going to come together. There was a space cleared near the north end of the terrace where a pair of pencil shaped blue-green conifers rose from the hillside to majestically frame the view with the ocean in the distance. 

Oliver and Chloe’s first anniversary party was friends and family—about sixty people total. 

Clark had to reach out and grab his fiancé’s wrist to tug her out of the path of a pair of uniformed caterers carrying in a slab of ice. 

“An ice sculpture? Really?” Lois whined.

Clark smiled. “Say the word, and we can run out and get a marriage license,” he teased. 

Lois had gone a little crazy planning a wedding in Paris at Christmas since Oliver was footing the bill. There was a nuclear standoff with North Korea, and they had been forced to cancel since Lois was covering the story at the U.N. and Clark was on stand-by in case there was a launch. Taking a leaf out of the Queen’s approach, they were going for third time lucky with a spring wedding a year after their original wedding date.

Lois gave him a speculative look, but then she shook her head. “This isn’t really our kind of thing.”

Clark looked around. “It’s kind of fancy, huh?”

Lois laced her arm through his. “Yeah. We’re simple folk,” she agreed, passing a pair of young women who were working at a narrow table with buckets full of tulips. The stalks were trimmed and wrapped in ribbon, then placed in vases for the tables. Returning to the house with Clark, Lois found it hard to believe that a year had gone by since Oliver and Chloe had gotten married. 

“Hey, Clark, Lois,” Mia Dearden greeted them with a grin. She had stopped calling Lois ‘Psycho’ except on special occasions. “Have you seen Roy?”

“Roy?” Clark drew a blank.

“I think she means Ollie’s stalker,” Lois clarified. “The red headed kid with the tattoos.”

“I thought he was Chloe’s driver,” Clark said. 

“Have you seen Oliver and Chloe?” Lois wanted to know.

Mia just gave them a look. “Seriously? They are so embarrassing. Give them another hour,” she advised. “On Saturdays, they rarely emerge before noon.”

Mia left them to sort out their misconceptions about Roy Harper, would-be freelance vigilante, former stalker, currently employed as Chloe Sullivan-Queen’s assistant/driver/luggage carrier. Or as their child labor scandal, since Oliver’s more comprehensive background check revealed that Roy had aged himself by three years and was actually seventeen. She found him in the basement adjacent garage working on Chloe’s Yaris—the car that refused to be lost, blown up, or abandoned. Oliver had tracked it down in Impound and did some of his hardcore mopey, brooding about Chloe while sitting in the garaged car listening to her saved voice mail messages.

“Do you even know what you are doing?” Mia asked as he consulted a laptop on the counter.

“Not even a little bit,” Roy admitted. “I’m mostly trying to stay out of the way.”

Moving to Star City had allowed Mia to shed a layer of her old life. She applied to a flight school the previous summer and placed on a waiting list for admission based on her SAT score and her transcript. She didn’t let that deter her, and she had been taking classes at a local community college to get prepared for the program. 

Roy Harper wandered into Chloe’s orbit not long after she moved to Star City. He had a big hero-crush on Oliver, but Chloe was more accessible. He got so flustered around Oliver that Oliver thought that he had a crush on him. Chloe doted on the kid. 

Until Oliver wised up and gave Chloe a puppy or a knocked her up, Mia figured that cute, clueless boys that needed mothering would continue to drift in and out of their world. 

 

Chloe’s dress wasn’t a traditional wedding dress. The drama was all in the fabric. It was a sheer cutout layered over nude silk. Chloe wore it with a belt of swirling gold leather loops, a pair of long diamond drop earrings, and gold sandals. The contrast with Oliver’s more traditional black suit and gold tie was stunning. Only Lois, Mia, and Chloe’s stylist knew that it wasn’t ‘the’ dress. The dress Chloe had selected was strapless and she was convinced she looked like she was falling out of it, so Lois ransacked Chloe’s closet and found the other dress. 

When they decided to renew their vows, they met with Dr. Armstrong, the officiant at their wedding. She apologized profusely when she understood that Chloe and Oliver didn’t remember getting married. “I would never have guessed that you had more than a bottle of champagne between you,” she told them. “You were excited, and happy, and very coherent. I have a present for you,” she said.

She had two 4”x6” hot pink post-it notes with their vows. “People who are drunk enough to forget being married aren’t this organized, “she said. 

Dr. Armstrong was dressed for the party, but not in her clerical garb when she came out onto the terrace. “If I could have everyone’s attention,” she began, giving the guests a minute to settle down. “Chloe and Oliver will be with us in a moment. I would like to remind everyone that this is a vow renewal, not a wedding. I presided over their wedding last year, and they composed their own vows. This vow renewal will incorporate their vows and a blessing.”

Listening, inside the vestibule at the back of the house, Oliver turned to Chloe. She had her hand pressed against her stomach. 

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She started to nod, and then made a queasy face. Then she bolted and ran into the kitchen to rummage through a drawer while the catering staff looked on. Oliver followed her. She found a package of saltines. 

Gabe came in after Oliver. “I don’t think your pastor friend had material prepared for the monologue for the Tonight Show, baby,” he said.

“We’re good,” Oliver said. “It’s nerves,” he guessed.

Chloe rolled her eyes. “And I’m pregnant, Dad,” she added. “Go ahead, say it.”

Gabe and Oliver exchanged puzzled looks. Gabe suddenly got it. “I don’t think it counts since you are actually married, but still disappointed that you haven’t finished college, Chloe,” he confirmed.

She did a neck-cracking move with her head that made Oliver grimace. “Your pimple is getting bigger by the minute,” he told her. “Let’s do this, prom queen,” he said, holding his arm out. 

Gabe pointed at him. “Now, you are my son-in-law. That was awesome,” he stage whispered as they walked out.

 

Suzanne Armstrong’s gaze shifted to Chloe when she saw that she was clutching a package of saltines along with Oliver’s hand. She hid a smile, resting her hands lightly over the top of Oliver and Chloe’s hands. 

She gave herself a moment to center herself for the blessing that she had in mind for them. Typical of the generation, this was a couple that was more spiritual than religious. She thought about Paul’s letter to the Corinthians and it’s message about love and vocation, and Ephesians 4:12. She didn’t think that Chloe and Oliver were unusual in wanting to lead meaningful lives full of purpose, but they were privileged by their awareness of that and their committed to supporting each other.

She invited Chloe to start, and stood back to give them this moment. 

When Chloe lifted her head, the wind caught her hair, pulling it loose, and Oliver caught it, smoothing it back behind her ear with his thumb.

“We started with no expectations, no commitments, and a lot of other ‘no’s’ that I needed. I wanted to be safe. Along the way to becoming ‘us’ you helped me become strong again. I fell in love with you and with us. We fit together. With you, the world makes a little more sense, and the idea that we serve a higher purpose doesn’t seem naïve, or crazy. Knowing that you love me fills me with joy and safety. Loving you gives clarity and purpose to my dreams. I want us to have a meaningful life, and I give myself to that, and you. ”

“I spent so much time practicing this,” Oliver said. Another gust of wind blew the same wayward lock of her hair loose, and he held it in place this time, looking into her eyes, remembering the times he had tried to bargain his way back to her returning to him. 

“I tried praying. I tried to find the perfect formula so God would get how much I needed you. The closest I ever got to being the man that I was meant to be was always with you. And, when I wasn’t sure if I would ever have that again, I figured out that it’s not just that I _need_ you—that I need your smile and the sound of your voice in my head, and your heart. I love those things. I love you. You are so much more than what makes me happy and sane. What I need is this commitment to you and the infinite possibilities of all the things that we can do and be together. I want your happiness—I’m selfish enough to want you to be happiest with me. I want my love to sustain you as your love sustains me.”

Dr. Armstrong resumed with the more traditional vows, tailored to the untraditional couple, smiling with them as they repeated them. 

Mindful that Chloe was probably feeling a little queasy, she kept the blessing short. 

“Gracious God, look Chloe and Oliver, and be generous with them. Strengthen the sense of joy, excitement, possibility, and challenge about what they have undertaken together; the ever-unfolding and beautiful work of refining their spirits in the presence of each other's witness, of becoming the bearers of your love. Give them peace of heart and strength of spirit so they may honor the vows they make here today.”

“May the promises they make here today inspire and instruct each of us who celebrates with them. Amen.”

She had no idea how they did it, but suddenly, Dr. Armstrong found herself in a shower of rose petals raining down from above, and an explosion of joyous applause as the happy couple kissed the daylights out of each other. Chloe’s cute Dad rolled his eyes at them and offered Dr. Armstrong his arm. “They could be a while,” he muttered while she looked up again, mystified by the petal drop.

Gabe just shook his head. “Don’t over think it,” he advised as Clark Kent, turned sideways to let them pass, smoothing his hair. 

“Hi, Mr. Sullivan,” he said.

“Clark,” Gabe patted his arm. Lois appeared behind Clark, looking a little too flushed and rumpled. Gabe gave her a disapproving look. “Lois! You . . . you need to get married,” he said.

She winked, and did something that made Clark jump. “You got it, Uncle Gabe. Move it, Smallville. I’ve got to kiss my cousin.”

Dr. Armstrong found herself escorted to a table where she was seated with Senator Kent, her son, his fiancé, and a cigar smoking general accompanied by another of Chloe’s cousins. While the other guests gradually made their way in and the caterers circulated with hor d'oeuvres and a beautifully plated salad and consume course was set down, Gabe casually rearranged the seating to join her. 

 

Ollie was hovering, bless him. The kissing and hugging was nice, but the perfume was doing weird things to her nose and her stomach. Courtney’s perfume was making her think bug spray, but that was nothing on Ted Grant’s Drakkar Noir. 

When Dinah reached Chloe, she gave her a kiss on the cheek. “You look fantastic,” she said. “I can’t believe your arm healed without a scratch,” she marveled. “Emil does good work.”

Chloe tilted her head to one side. She hadn’t given it any thought. Not long after she was shot, Dinah said something to her about how it was a shame since it would leave a scar. 

She nodded. “Emil,” she nodded. “He’s the best.”

The caterer sent their party planner out to ask that everyone find their way to their table for dinner and the impromptu receiving line thinned out. Chloe slipped away to freshen up and sneak a peek at her positive pregnancy test again. 

Oliver wanted to go to the pharmacy to get a pregnancy test, but she knew better. She made Roy do it, and called their pharmacist to ask them to pick out a test for her. Poor baby. He was still traumatized. He turned red when she stopped at his table to kiss his cheek and thank him for making her day easier. 

She stayed for a minute longer to let Bart flirt with her, and then floated on a big, fat, fluffy cloud of happiness to meet her amazingly handsome, smart, sexy husband. 

“You look like you aren’t going to throw up anymore,” he said.

Chloe laughed. “You look great, too, baby,” she said. She tried to keep a lid on ‘baby’, but now that they were having one, she was going over to the other side.

“I’m hungry,” she said, letting him lead her to their table. They had Mia, Emil, Lucy, Connor, and Jonn, with the only other couple being Victor and Sarah. 

Lucy gave her a look. “Your Dad switched with me. I think he’s putting old weird moves on your minister,” she said.

“Go, Gabe,” Oliver raised a wine glass to toast his father-in-law. Gabe ignored him.

“I’m in love with your dress, Chloe,” Sarah said. “You looked stunning with the sun setting.”

Chloe snapped her fingers. “We forgot to do the pose,” she said.

“What’s the pose?” Emil wanted to know.

Chloe gestured to Oliver, “Three-quarter profile,” she demonstrated. “My part is the lean into his big, strong arm and gaze adoringly at him. For posterity.”

“Around Chez Queen, we call that Saturday morning,” Mia cracked. 

Oliver turned to Chloe, kissing her cheek. “You do kind of look like that, but let’s not tell Mia that it’s because I’m frying bacon,” he whispered.

“Deal.” She stole a quick kiss.

Oliver leaned over. “Buddy? After dinner? Chloe and I need to talk to you,” he said.

Emil looked at Chloe, but she was apparently working on her expression for the infamous pose, so he just nodded. 

Later, Chloe wouldn’t remember anything that she ate, or that she barely ate more than a bite or two of each course. It was the best dinner, best party, best, happiest moment of her life—and her pimple was gone too, like it never existed. 

After dinner, she danced with Oliver, and her Dad, and Clark, and she was twirling around with her Uncle Sam when Oliver and Emil cut in. The three of them returned to the house so Oliver could tell someone before it killed him.

“Pregnant,” he said, pointing at her.

Emil, God bless him reacted like their friend instead of their doctor. He was counting. “Score! I had fifty on late November in the pool.” He turned to Chloe. “You aren’t very pregnant, are you?”

Suddenly he was a doctor again. “When was your last menstrual period?”

“Three weeks ago,” Chloe said.

And Dr. Evil Genius was back, with his little ‘mwah haha’ chortle and dance step. “I’m going to crush the baby pool,” he said. 

Oliver and Chloe exchanged glances.

Emil cocked his head to one side. “And . . . I’m really happy for you,” he said, and then, Dr. Hamilton was back, “and I’m going to go ahead and prescribe a prenatal vitamin, and get you referred to an OB,” he was nodding now. “Yep, and might as well start thinking pediatrician. If you go crazy on redecorating, starting tomorrow, paint fumes are bad and,” he blew out a breath. “Kind of took you by surprise that there is a pool, huh?”

Chloe lost it at that point. She laughed until she had to sit, and then when Oliver observed that he did not see why it was so funny, he set her off again.

He rubbed her back. “It’s been a big, emotional day,” he said. “But, this isn’t funny,” he sounded a little wounded. “This is serious, man. This is my wife and our first child,” he patted her back. “Take a breath, Chloe,” he urged. “We told you first because I thought you’d appreciate the solemnity of the occasion,” he told Emil. “We’re going to do this over,” he said sternly, while Chloe pressed her hand to her mouth to stifle her giggling.

Oliver took a deep breath. “Emil. We have some news that we’d like to share with you before we tell our family and our other friends who might not be so sensitive—“

One giggle snort slipped out.

Emil couldn’t look at Chloe. He tilted his head to give Oliver his best empathetic healer expression. 

“Chloe is pregnant with—“

“Oh, my God, Ollie. It’s not baby Jesus,” she said. “No, no!” She pointed at him. “Sit and practice saying ‘we are having a baby’ until you don’t sound like you are on drugs,” she said. 

Emil just shook his head. “You both sound like you are on drugs, but whatever. This moment is even more meaningful for me since I am going to crush the baby pool,” he nodded to Chloe. “How do you feel?” he asked.

“A have little flashes of nausea, but that’s it so far,” she said. She put her hands on her cheeks. “I’m going to put a cold cloth on my face,” she said. “That was funny. Thank you, Emil.”

Oliver was sitting on the couch in Chloe’s home office. Emil rested his hip on the desk. “Big day?”

Oliver nodded. “It’s . . . I have these days when I think that we’ve got too much stuff going on and I know that we aren’t going to stop. It’s frustrating,” he admitted. “This is different. This is going to change things.”

Emil nodded, he cleared his throat. “What Dr. Armstrong said? About you inspiring and instructing us by your example?” He nodded again. “Completely true. You already do that. I know that you will keep doing that.”

Oliver cracked a smile. “Am I your hero?” he asked.

Emil rolled his eyes. “Chloe is. You? Riding her coattails,” he scoffed. “Come on. Let’s go find the good Scotch and have a toast.”

The news slowly spread. Chloe told her Dad, and her Dad told her Uncle Sam, who told Lucy while Chloe was telling Lois. Gabe told Martha, who found Clark, and told him to go find Chloe or Oliver because they had something to tell him. Oliver told Mia. 

Emil watched it all from the end of the terrace where Chloe and Oliver had renewed their vows. Their lives would never be easy or uncomplicated. But they would be well lived. Chloe and Oliver would take their charge to set a good example to heart, and it would help them resist the temptations that would test them.

The sound of an air canon made him flinch, and then the sky light up with a brilliant shower of phosphorescent light. Of course, there were fireworks, he thought as he watched Oliver pick Chloe up. He sat on the stairs, and Mia joined him with a bottle of champagne. 

“What are we toasting?” he asked. 

“Love and happily ever after?” Mia suggested, raising her bottle.

“Done,” Emil said as light rained down in a fantastic pattern and melted into the black.


End file.
